Sherry Quam Taylor: High ROI Development & Marketing Communications Teams
You want these two teams—fundraising and marcomm—to align every fundraising hour with its maximum dollars. You want these teams to have the time to secure investment level gifts. And you want them to secure the unrestricted gifts you need to grow and sustain your mission. Sherry Quam Taylor returns to share her strategies for achieving these vital ambitions. She’s CEO of Quam Taylor, LLC.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I am glad you’re with us. I’d come down with Irio denys if I saw that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s up this week? Hey, Tony, we have IRO I development and marketing communications teams. You want these two teams, fundraising and Marcom to align every fundraising hour with its maximum dollars. You want these teams to have the time to secure investment level gifts and you want them to secure the unrestricted gifts. You need to grow and sustain your mission. Sherri Quam Taylor returns to share her strategies for achieving these vital ambitions. She is CEO of Quam Taylor LLC on Tony’s Take two. It’s National Make A Will Month were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more, more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is high ro I development and marketing communications teams. It’s a pleasure to welcome back, Sherry Quam Taylor to nonprofit radio. She is CEO of Quam Taylor LLC. She helps business minded nonprofit CEO S create financial sustainability by revealing how to diversify, funds, grow general operations revenue and align their team’s hours with relational dollars. Her practice is at Quam taylor.com and Sherry is active on LLC and Sherry is active on linkedin. She is also the mother of two future CEO daughters. Welcome back, Sherry. It’s good to see you, Tony. I, I love that. Uh that, that uh extra my intro. Thank you gu Well, your daughter, we’re looking forward to your daughter’s. Uh well, 11 will be going to college, one is in college. Both of them becoming CEO S what, what, what kinds of companies do you think they’ll run? You had to guess at this, at this stage in their lives. It’s a good question. Um You know, it’s interesting, I have, they’re both in business school and so uh my older one is a bit more introverted, real, you know, process driven. She’s studying uh mis and supply chain logistics. Uh So I feel like some, some international company that’s shipping things all over the world. Um And then my younger daughter is, is more of my extrovert and so she just wants to be out in front of the room selling. So I think she’s gonna be selling you know, multimillion dollar deals and it is really afraid of, of, of nothing. So, it’s, it’s fun to watch, uh, both their paths be so different, but yet, you know, they’re leaders in their own way. All right. Yes, indeed. Future leaders. Cool. Love it. We’ll give him, uh, we’ll give them 10 years, 10 years. That does that sound good to be, uh, for each of them to be CEO S 10 year. I, I would definitely, uh maybe put my money on that. Ok, well, look, so we’re talking about uh having our development and marketing communications teams, uh be successful together, be hard, high ro i together. Uh But of course, we also have to talk to folks who uh are in smaller shops that don’t have separate teams. But what, uh what’s the occasion for this? Why do you, why do you see the need? Why, why did you bring this topic to me? Yeah. Well, you really set me up so, well, Tony, even with your, your phrase of like the other 95% because, you know, at the end of the day, about that percentage of nonprofits, uh never reached the $1 million mark or frankly the $5 million budget mark. And so, uh a lot of organizations even at that size come to me with big plans to scale and it might be, you know, it might be when you on a two x three x five X, whatever that is, uh and, and they’re coming to me saying, well, how do we grow? How do, how can we raise more money? And the question oftentimes I believe we need to flip and ask is, well, why are we staying small? Like what is keeping us from scaling in the first place? And so, you know, a lot of my work is looking under the hood. Sure. Can I teach people to be great and, and better fundraisers? Yeah. But oftentimes it’s really that structure from an organizational standpoint, that business behind the fundraising that is keeping organizations small. So we have to go straight to the or chart, we have to go and look and say, are our fundraisers or the single person on our fundraising team or even if you had a team of three or four, are they doing the right things to yield the budget? Are they doing the right things that aligns their hours with dollars? And so, you know what topic comes up, it comes up of like, well, talk to me, development director, what are you doing? What, what’s your schedule look like? What, what are you spending your time on so often? The list we get are, are all marketing communication activities, right? We go, we got that appeal, we get Spring Appeal, the Fall appeal, the social media, the, the campaign for XYZ, all very traditional marketing communication activities. Um Are those important? You bet somebody has to be doing them but oftentimes those are the things that are generating and attracting smaller dollar donors. Again, importantly, but when we want to scale, we wanna grow so often, the the the list of 52 activities that we expect a development director do to do is actually what’s keeping them from growing, keeping them from moving into relational fundraising, keeping them from moving into strong annual fund growth, you know, even plan giving growth, those types of things. So this is one of the questions. Um One of the things I unearth in every single one of my engagements, which is really, um is your development team, uh being allowed to do true development activities or are they being pulled into other parts of the organization that’s keeping them from fully funding the organization? I have a concern that for weaker fundraisers, they, they use these other activities like everything you named. I’m thinking also of the four color brochure or, or four color annual report, you know, they use these activities to uh to avoid what is difficult for them. Now again, I’m talking about weaker people in development or, or inexperienced, just haven’t had the experience and they just don’t, yeah, they, they haven’t had the experience. Um I’ve seen, I’ve seen like mid-level folks too. They somehow they, you know, they got promoted, uh erroneously, I think in, in multiple jobs through multiple organizations. Um they interview, well, I always say and they, they use but whatever the whatever the uh persona of the person, they’re using these activities as a, as a as an excuse to not be in front of donors, not having individual one on one face to face, kitchen table, office restaurant. And you would say investment level conversations to asking for 567 figure gifts, they’re using these activities. Oh, I have to get the four color annual report out. This is going to take me months, the printer, the graphic designer, the approval, I have to write the te you know that there goes two months of not having conversations that are going to lead to real growth, real investment level gifts and, and it it and I just want it ticks me off that they’re avoiding what is really gonna make the money for the organization. It’s not the four color brochure or annual report. This is true. I love where, what are we at minute six? We’re on the soapbox. I love it. That’s what I love about you. Well, Tony, I would also say like if we look at it from another angle too, it’s actually too often what the sector tells fundraisers. They are like, you know, II I believe that I see so often the messaging is, is like we, we we’re on a deadline, everything is urgent. We gotta crunch to the finish line. We gotta uh fundraisers are, are these people who scurry around? We’re on this spin cycle. Nn No, we’re not. You know, sometimes I say, hey, I don’t do urgent, let’s do thoughtful funding processes that fully fund our organization. And so oftentimes I just find so much of the advice is feeding into uh that type of fundraising. Even you see that on boards. You know, uh you know, I did, I did a board training this morning and so often when I say, ok, so appeals, events, campaigns that the turn and burn that we think fundraising is sitting at our desk behind the email machine if you will. That’s that type of fundraising should only be uh adding up to about 25% of your revenue. The fee is 75 percent of your revenue needs to be what you’re talking about. Relational. Uh just thoughtful might take six months to 24 months to land that gift. And so few fundraisers have had that training. Uh They, they, they kind of have figured out the grants and appeals and events and all of that spin, but they’ve never needed to know how to do that or that no one has ever invested in them learning. Those are two very different skill sets and to tie to our topic. One is way more mark com based versus development based and this is how you beat that 95% percentage you gave at the top of the show. This is how you move to diversify funds. Are you secure enough general operating revenue to fully fund your organization is really making sure that these activities, those relational activities are, are, are, you know, are the priority in your development departments. Le let’s talk about explicitly, we, we’ve touched around a little bit, uh, both of us have, but let’s talk about some of the symptoms. You know, what, what is, uh, what is low functioning development and marketing, team, teams, team or teams, uh, look like, I mean, I kind of suggested I’m too busy with the annual report for the next two months. Ok. That there’s one, what you’re, uh what are some symptoms you see? Well, let’s look at it from a couple of different angles, even if we think of from a budget and growth perspective. Uh you know, the minute I get a call I go on somebody’s 990 oftentimes a symptom would be, well, the revenue is kind of just bumping along, might be a little bit of growth, but there’s some up, there’s some down years. Um that tells me perhaps there are not as many dedicated hours to fundraising as there needs to be. Um, another symptom might be, uh you know, a, a heavy reliance on one thing whether that’s programmatic revenue earned revenue, uh one big gala or one big donor, uh like an over dependence on one thing, grants from institutions, project based grants. If, if that, if those parts of your organization are growing, but perhaps you’re giving from single source decision makers individuals, I can pick up a phone and talk to them family foundations. I could pick up the phone and talk to them private businesses. Hello, if that revenue is not growing, that tells me something’s wrong. That tells me uh that perhaps the team has not had a relational training. They do, they are not having investment level conversations with donors. Um I would also say that when, then we do say, ok, now we have, we have five hours this week to focus on fundraising. Um Then if, if those activities are the bottom part of the pyramid appeals to all the things. Um That tells me that uh they’re not running this type of funding model, they’re not aligning their hours with dollars. There’s so many things Tony. Um I also want to add from the board perspective if I then see that the, if the board is giving you one hour a month outside of their traditional meetings, if those activities are transactional event, appeal, email posting and giving Tuesday, if that is the type of fundraising, the board is doing, that is a red flag to me because the board takes their cue from the fundraising staff and the executive director. And so that tells me perhaps that, that that executive director and that development team needs training in this area so that the board can maximize their networks. So many things to look at. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company. Committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive. Fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous. Gives you the nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact virtuous.org. Now back to high ro I development and marketing communications teams. What kind of growth do you like to see a year over year in, in revenue? Diversified fundraising revenue? What, what’s a, what’s a, what’s a fair growth percentage year over year? Yeah, I mean, it’s so different, Tony, I’m gonna, I’m gonna answer that uh a little selfishly because, you know, I love when an ed comes to me and says, you know, we’re a $1 million organization and we want to be a 10, you know, I have that client right now and she’s ahead of schedule. You know, I love that. If that is a meaty, a growth minded, let’s do this uh hungry executive director. That’s my, my favorite thing to do. Um I would say that not everybody has plans to two x, three x five x 10 X. Um However, I believe that everybody probably should be and could be growing at a greater rate. Uh I had another client, I’m just thinking of where they said, well, we kind of maybe 5 to 7% but we never get to do things that are in our strategic plan. So it’s like we, we spend the five or 7% is not, is not fulfilling your plan. It’s unrealistic. You’re realistic, your plan is unrealistic and you have no, you have no plan to, to budget for plan, budgeting for the plan. So I, I mean, I, I’m gonna do a blanket statement to your question to say, I honestly believe people could be growing at a greater clip than, than most of them believe. And it really has to do with um this is what’s crazy. It has to do with the spend even more than the race. And what I mean by that is if we’re a $1 million org and maybe we want to be a $3 million org in five years, we, we immediately go to, well, what kind of fundraising things do we need to do? Hold on first. The, the first question we have to say is how do we actually resource our organization to turn us into an engine that yields $3 million or 5 million, whatever you want it to be first, is the spend and so, um, so often orgs come to me where we’re one, we want to be a three and we kind of try to do that on our 1.5 staff load that doesn’t work because, and also that staff load is in charge of marketing communications. And so I, I want people to hear, um, whether you’re big or small or, you know, there are a lot of options. It’s that you do not have the one option, which is let’s bring on a development director and throw all things that even look or smell like fundraising on their plate. That’s not gonna work. It’s gonna set that director up for failure, burn out. Uh And all the things we’re seeing in the sector, there’s a lot of different options. You can’t do all things at once. The, the one person, development and, and marketing team person, there’s not a team team of one. Yeah, that is uh that, that is setting them up for failure. That’s a recipe for disaster. The one person devoted to both of those. It’s just, it’s just not realistic. And even when um the leader of maybe there’s even staff on the team, I have a amazing client uh in the Boston area and she was on my podcast recently and one of the big shifts we made for their organization and there may be a 3.5 $4 million org was actually splitting these two departments because uh, she even said on my podcast, uh, gosh, some weeks, 80% of my time was being spent on marketing communications. And so then I got the development, kind of got the leftovers. Yeah, exactly. And, uh, that, that’s why you’re not growing, that’s why you’re staying small. And so we have to look at these root business issues, um, before we can say now what, what does, what should fundraising look like? It actually yields that number. Uh So let’s talk about some of the uh well, I wanted to contribute that, uh just amplify something you said earlier. The other reason that that’s uh aside from sheer hours in a, in a day and a week, why that’s a recipe for disaster is the skills are so different between relational successful individual fundraising and uh marketing communications. Just they, they’re different areas of expertise. You know, you wouldn’t, you, I’m speaking now to board members. You wouldn’t do that to your company. You wouldn’t have somebody uh devoted to uh sales and research. You wouldn’t do it. So don’t have someone in the nonprofit whose board you’re sitting on for which you are a fiduciary. And among the, the uh the, the board of most committed loyal volunteers and donors to that organization don’t, don’t subject your, your nonprofit to that. Yeah, they are two very different skill sets. I will tell you, I sit in as you can imagine a lot of interviews and so a lot of the work I do with people is like, OK, so we want to be here, we want to go there. What head count does that take? And then what should those people be doing? So oftentimes, I’m invited to sit in interviews and uh, I asked some pretty, pretty pointing questions and, and when I’m asking about relational fundraising, what we’re talking about, but the answers come back to me as appeal goals, event goals, how we’re slicing and dicing the database, you know, the print fees for the and report to bring up your what you’ve brought up. When the answers always pivot to more of that transactional fundraising, more of the event that, that type of cadence, that’s a red flag for me. But again, I’ve been accused Tony of like not liking events and appeals. I love them. I, I go to them but they cannot take 100% of your team’s time. So I’m looking for, do you know how to attract investment, local donors? Do you know how to lead them? Do you know how to solicit them and get their best gift? And then do you know how to get that gift every year? And then do you know how to get that gift year after year after year to where? Oh, we have a capital campaign. They might give a gift above and beyond. Oh, we’re starting uh an endowment campaign. They might be able to commit to a gift above and beyond. That is what I’m talking about. That is how we fully fund our organizations. All right, let’s talk about some, some specifics. That’s all I, I agree. All, all valuable. Um, le le let’s drill down to some specifics about, you know, making development and marketing, communications more uh well, higher ro I, that’s what we’re, that’s what we’re trying to get through. So, uh you, you’ve alluded to this already. Staff, staffing, the adequacy of the staffing. It’s, I mean, this is where there’s a, there’s a numbers, a very simple equation we need to do to start and then we can dig deeper and literally have this conversation this morning. Um So there’s, you were, you were busy this morning? I was busy conversation. You had a board briefing. I did actually, I, I love, you know, you know, I’m a morning person. So I love my East Coast clients who want me to do a board training at like eight in the morning. We here we go. Um So we have to do a math equation. And so what I said to them was, they told me the number they wanted to go to. And I said, hey, here’s a rule of thumb. The rule of thumb is for every $500,000 more you wanna raise. That’s a staff person. And so if your budget this year is a 2.5 that’s five people. Uh you know, jaws drop. Now, I said now hold on. That doesn’t mean we are cookie cutters and hey, you database person you got to raise 500 K. No. But what that does mean is I would hope your development director or your major gifts person has a $1 million portfolio and that balances out that database or kind of coordinator position. So as a rule of thumb, there has to be a math equation to say if we want to grow, let’s just say Tony from 1 million to 2 million. Ok, then we might need to hire two people. 00 my goodness. Which is even more reason you need to be in this high Roy model. And so this is the math equation that everybody skips. It’s like let’s just grind harder. Hope you can do it. I don’t know how the development teams are gonna do that. Their head count is not set up to yield that number. So of course, they can’t and hope is not a strategy. Hope is not a strategy. This goes back to the spend, Tony. We gotta hire people, spend the money to make the money. What do we do initially? All right. Suppose we’re take your perfect hypothetical raising, raising a million dollars. We want to raise $2 million in 2025. If we need to hire two people, how do we fund the two people before we start raising the money? This is I get this question to both people when you don’t have that money coming in. But like we know where the compass should be set, right? So this is where this, these are the tough questions we have to ask. So let’s say that one person comes on and then we have to say, um a what do we as an organization? Because this is not just the fundraising theme, this is also the executive director who needs to be sitting in those investment level conversations. Hey, what do we as an organization need to stop doing a get hours so that we can start doing more relational fundraising? So you just set me up perfectly today. So what I advised this team this morning was I said, let’s talk about 10 hours that your executive director to get back in their schedule. What could she stop doing so that she could start doing more of these types of activities that frankly are going to yield five times more money, 10 hours, 10 hours a month, 10 hours a week a week. That’s ambitious. All right. But you know, it is ambitious. So let’s call it. I’m not, I’m not saying it shouldn’t be ambitious. I’m just saying that’s ambitious. All right. So 40 we’re gonna start devoting, we’re gonna try to find, we’re gonna find activities where, where the CEO can spend 40 hours a month in new, new relational fundraising time or even, and even this group has a development director and she’s incredible. Um but even perhaps I know I challenged them and said, let’s look how much time is being spent more on transactional activities. Now, they’re just coming off a gas. So it feels really, like, really heavy. But let’s look and see how could we move that person’s 10 hours a week into these activities that are going to yield more money. So my point of like kind of telling you that is we can’t go 100% full on, on all of these initiatives at once. It’s ok that sometimes we need to take something that’s operating at 10% and move it to 40% and sit in that a little bit because we still, we still have events, we still have appeals, we still have emailers to get out and then look at ok, now we’re gonna take it to 60% and now we’re yielding more money and we can actually hire people to take things off other people’s plates. So it’s just not a one size fits all. There’s so many options. Maybe you should hire a contractor 1500 a month to be writing your news and appeals and whatever. Uh your, your development director is gonna make that money back five fold by having those extra hours in their schedule. Maybe it’s a contractor for some of the grants for some of the grants work grant event, um, a any of that kind of stuff. And so this goes back to the spend what you spend sometimes I’ll say, well, would you spend $15,000 this year on a writer or whatever? So that your development director can move from yielding 300 K a year to 800 K a year. I’ll take, I’ll kind of take that math all day long. Would you invest 15,000 to make half a million? Yes. So the gut reaction is, no, we can’t spend the money. Well, well, let’s really look what’s behind that. So the head count, we got to do the math. We’ve got to do the math and it goes, it goes deeper than just head count. It’s, it’s, it’s a time aligned with dollars. It’s freeing up time for the existing staff. So we can get to the point where we can hire the additional fundraiser, the second fundraiser. And again, we’re modeling that for the board. Uh, you know, and I know I know this is the second topic that I brought up to you and I know we’ve, we’ve touched on it. Can I, can I say it? You know. So, so it’s the, it’s the head count, right? It’s the staff, staff count. Uh, and then it’s ok. Well, maybe we even have the count. But as fundraisers, uh, we’re just simply wearing too many hats. Right. And so, yes, are we in charge of the mark and the fundraising? Um, but I also saw something so interesting, um, shows on Twitter and it was a it was a corporate marketing person and in essence, she was saying that even 5, 10 years ago, the vehicles as to which we did marketing, there are like seven core vehicles or something. And today there’s like 30 something of ways, that ways that we engage with our clients and we gotta do this with like there just keeps mo more just keeps lobbying on the plates of marketers and, and communicators and fundraisers. We cannot do it all just because it brings in $5 doesn’t mean you should be doing it as a fundraiser. So we gotta get, uh, we, we gotta get our, our, our, our path a little, little narrower here. We gotta bring it in. We gotta pick 3 to 5 things. And are we doing those things? Well, are they yielding what they should yield? Uh We have to willingly be reflective of our activities and our hours and take off those hats so that we can put on high ro i high revenue generating hats. Um This, the uh fundraiser has to be so reflective of the hours that they’re spending in a day because we, we always say, well, we’re wearing too many hats as fundraisers. Well, then take him off and decide we can’t get to those four hats until we have a team of four. And right now we have a team of two. Stop pause. It’s OK. The organization is not gonna go under if you switch your newsletter to every other month versus monthly for six months. You’re not gonna go under, or? Oh, my gosh, we didn’t do a giving Tuesday campaign and run around like crazy people and, like, make $7000. It’s ok. Go form relationships with two people and get five K each from them. It’s more money. Um, oh, can I, oh, can I give one other really exciting thing, Tony? No, I’d rather, I’d rather you not skip it. I just thought of this, you know, I like to talk in examples. One of my clients, I love them. I love all my clients. They’re so good. They’re so good because they’re a plus students and they take it and they go and do it. So they made this decision. They want to scale. They’re having, you know, cash flow has been uh up and down. They last year had done uh a couple events, uh one being a gal, one being something smart and they said we can’t do it anymore. Like it’s, it’s, we have to change the way we’re doing this. We’re chasing our tail. So they decided not to do their events and they hired me to help them move into this relational cadence. It’s been so fun to watch and it’s been nerve wracking. Right. Like what do you mean we’re not doing the gala that, you know, are the donors right? Here’s the beauty of it. I talked to them last week and they’ve been having, uh, one on one conversations with their donors who they’ve rarely had conversations with before and they’re getting to know them and it’s going great and like, oh, my gosh, it was an incredible conversation. They’ve gotten, uh, four significant gifts recently in the past. I don’t know, I don’t know. 4560 days, the net on those four gifts from building relationships leading them to a, through a journey, asking them for their best gift. It netted more than their galla did last year from four relationships. And I love this development director because she’s so analytical with the numbers and she, she had that for me and I was like, what? That’s incredible. That’s fantastic. And do that 10 more times and the hours that the, that the hours are so much fewer versus the gala. Does the, does the flower match the bunting who’s on table 18? Don’t sit her next to him. You know, all those, all those gala hours you, you take a, you take a, I think you take a uh like 20% of them and you can raise the kind of money from individual relational investment level conversations and relationships that, that you just exemplified. I, I, I I know it to be true. You do too. But you know, this team had to choose to take off that hat. And then when people said, oh, but what about the event? How are you gonna do it? But we love bringing our friends. Hold on. Our mid and major level donors are not giving their best gift at events full stop they’re giving. Oh yeah, the auction item, all the thing. Oh, here’s the tickets, here’s the table. So they made this conscious, conscious effort and I’m so proud of them because it, it like that journey of stopping and then starting feels real lonely in the in between. Sometimes. This is when I say you’re a faith based organization for this amount, for these couple months. When you’re like, I’m doing the things, I’m building the relationships. Am I going to see the results? And they did it and they’re doing it and even just these four relationships have, have netted more in the, the gala. Imagine what that’s gonna do when they’ve, when they’ve spoken to all of their donors and then they’re piping their donors and their boards going. 00, you mean we could do it like that? 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 donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. There’s an anxiety in the nation uh attention. Uh It’s, but it’s a positive, positive energy. You can feel it. Uh It’s not the enjoyment of being in the middle of summer. It’s not the presidential election. It’s National Make A Will Month. August. August is National Make A Will Month. We are recording on Thursday the first, it’s the first day of the month I which I believe should be a national holiday. I think the banks should be closed. The markets should be closed all to uh commemorate the solemnity of the occasion. The kicking off the launching of National Make A Will Month. So I think the first day of August should be a a national holiday. I I wish you had been off on the first of August. Um Well, plus it fits in perfectly. So we got uh you have uh in July, you got Fourth of July, August. Now you have the launching of National Make A Will Month, August 1st every year and then in September, uh we, we get uh Labor Day. So there’s a, there’s a, there’s a vacation day for us each month during this, during the summer. So uh I think so it should be a national holiday. But uh it is all right until that, until that comes around, until we, we we get the commemoration, the respect for National Make A Will Month that it deserves nationwide. Uh We’ll have to just suffice with, uh you know, uh celebrating it for ourselves. And of course, I do plan to giving fundraising as a consultant. So National Make A Will Month is the time to either a be reminding your donors about National Make A Will Month and the importance of them including you in their wills or b if you’re not doing planned giving fundraising, now, then to recognize the value of planned giving, fundraising and the way to kick it off is the simplest planned gift, gifts in wills gifts in wills. So whether you’re talking to your donors or you’re talking to your vice president or your CEO or your board. August is the month to be talking about wills encouraging your donors to include your work, your nonprofit in theirs or encouraging your CEO or your board to get you launched in planned Giving. Hopefully you don’t really need your board approval, but maybe, maybe you want to let them know, not seeking their approval or consent, but informing them that you’re launching planned giving. I like that model better. And of course, you’re gonna start with gifts and wills because they’re the easiest planned gift. They’re the most common planned gift by far. So National Make a Will month. Um Let’s uh I don’t know how to lobby for national holidays. I don’t have to go to Congress. Uh I probably should wait so we probably should wait until after the presidential election and see which administration we have, uh, to see which, who would be, uh, or how to approach them best about August 1st being a national holiday. But all of August is National Make a Will Month. That is Tony’s take two Kate. You make a petition to get off August 1st. I will sign it with you. All right. I think we’ll have two then. Well, I know we’ll have two. We’ll have two. I don’t know. Who else could we get, uh, your dad? Oh, he’ll, he’ll be, your dad will definitely be into another day off. Extra national holiday. All right. So there’s three. We got three people. You gotta start somewhere, start, start small and then we’ll, we’ll grow, we’ll, we’ll go outside the, uh, the lion. What is it called? The Lion King? The, the store down by you, the food lion. Oh, Food Lion, the supermarket. Yes. The, the Lion King supermarket. Remember? Confusing Broadway and uh Emerald Drive in uh Emerald Isle, North Carolina. That’s ok. They’re similar. Yes. Food Lion. We’ll go outside the Food Lion supermarket. I mean, who doesn’t want an extra day off in the summer? Come on. I can’t think of one person. Right. Right. All right. Well, we’ve got Fuku but loads more time. Here’s the rest of high ro I development and marketing communications teams with Sherry Quam Taylor. You’re gonna have to bring the board along when you, when you make the decision to abandon. Let’s take the extreme example. The Gala, the annual Gala, we love our friends come, we, we raise so much money from our friends. II, I buy two tables of 10 and, and I, I, it’s, you, you, that you’re gonna, you’re gonna have to overcome board objections because, and again, II, I see a lot of board members, like I said, 20 minutes ago using this as a crutch as an excuse. You know, because it’s easy to invite friends to gas because they know that the friends know that you’ll go to their gala. So it’s a share, you know, everybody, it comes out equal in the end and, and each organization benefits. Yeah, but it’s, it’s, it’s not sophisticated fundraising. It’s, it’s, it’s galas and, and they’re, they’re not the highest ro I, so you’re gonna have to bring the board along on this heart. Can you, can you share what that, that ex example or something bringing the board along for? But we love the gala. It’s, it’s, it’s mission critical for us. Here’s, here’s what I’ll say and, and I’m gonna give props to this, this leader, the board is killing it. They have, they have said, oh, well, that’s now, that’s now because it’s happening. But here’s what I would say. This is where we started saying like, what are the symptoms? I think you asked me? Ok, hold on. But let’s look from a business perspective. Um, are we able to pay our staff living wage, competitive wage. Are we having to dip into reserves or are we having to tap into a line of credit every year? Are we struggling with cash flow? Half the month? Um Have I never, as the ed have been able to take a raise in years. All of these things are happening in our organizations where we are not raising enough money. If we keep doing the same thing and getting the same results that tells us what we need to do, we have to change, we have to go back to the root and change the model and that even how we’re approaching revenue generation. And so oftentimes, you know, a lot of people come to me and they’re growing and scaling and they want to diversify and just get stronger. But oftentimes people come to me and say we’ve tried everything else. So we got, we gotta shake it up. We have to have a paradigm shift. And I really think that’s in this situation, what that organization is ready for. They’re like, this is harder than it needs to be. And every year it’s harder than it needs to be. Um we have to do something different to get different results. And so in this case, the board was in agreement, I mean, this is a business decision, right? Uh Are we going to keep doing what we’re doing and getting the same results or do we actually want to accomplish what we, what we’ve set out what our organization has set out to accomplish. Um You, you can only squeeze a budget so much. Uh You know, you can’t do more on less. You know, you’ve, I’ve said that many times, Tony in our conversations. Um And so it has to be a root business decision to say we, our, our mission calls for scaling and what we’re doing is not yielding the dollars that actually allow us to do that. And so there has to be a resourcing change. Whether that’s staffing, whether that’s getting a consultant, whether that’s tools we’re using, there has to be a resourcing change that yields a new number. That’s what the board has to agree on first. Then we can lead them on a journey through a model, then we can help them understand this. But I will tell you when they start seeing results and even if it’s a $1000 donor going to a $2500 gift, it’s like, oh, they three extra that gift or, you know, 2.5 extra. Wow, this is working when they start seeing the results. It’s a bit of a like, oh, I, I didn’t think people would respond to this, but it really comes back to their own relationship with money and fundraising and being on the board and, and feeling like, oh, I, I don’t want to ask people for money. It’s the board that I’m on it. Really goes back to their own comfort level. But I always tell, tell board members, you’re not asking people to give more money to the board that you serve on or the, the organization that you serve with. You’re asking people to invest in an amazing mission and to change lives and you’re really offering an amazing opportunity for people to invest in. And I uh II, I wanna selfishly extrapolate it out even further into when these investment level conversations, when the $1000 donor goes to 2500 and then they later on years later become a planned giving donor and they have died. And now we get to the planned giving multiplier which I’ve seen 4600 times lifetime giving total lifetime giving 4600 times larger in, in the estate gift. And the gift, the simple gift in someone’s will and sometimes the, sometimes the plan giving multipliers is only like 450 or so or, but I’ve seen it as high as over 4000. So, and you’re not gonna, and you’re not setting, I guess I’m I’m uh I’m helping answer my own question the way you, you just fully answered it. I’m adding a little, you’re not cultivating gala attendees for planned gifts. You’re not gonna see that 4600 times planned giving multiplier from the person who comes to a gala 10 years in a row. You’re not gonna see it. They’re not going to include you in their will, they’re not committed but take the same person and open up in a relational convers uh a relationship with them with about investment level gifts through the years and you are cultivating them for the ultimate gift planned gift, but it’s not gonna happen from Gala attendees, right? You’re so right. So Tony, I feel like this is why we, we kind of get each other. Um A lot of people will say to me when they reach out like, what’s it like to work with you? And they’ll say, what do you think about us starting an endowment? What do you think of? I said, well, first tell me about your annual, tell, tell me about your relationships with your donors. Tell me how you’re leading them on a great journey all year long. But how are you soliciting them? Like if, if they’re not telling me, well, we, we do this and then we do this and then we’re doing this and we’re serving them and then we ask them, we solicit them and they do attend our event. Like if they’re not showing me that they know actually how to lead a donor through a great experience to their best gift on an annual fund basis. Let’s be real hard for them to miraculously wake up one day and be like, I’m gonna go ask this person for AAA gift by will or whatever. So we got to get in this annual fun cadence of leading our donors to their best gift. Then these types of conversations about a planned gift or gifts by what, what are, oh, they’re just a natural extension of our relationship, which is how it should be. Did you steal that from me? Natural extension? I, I didn’t mean to, it’s a natural extension of the giving that they’ve been doing for a, for a long, long time. But I absolutely, I, it’s a natural extension of the giving they’ve been doing for decades and, and I would say board member, think of yourself, think of a gala that you’ve gone to for the, for many years because a friend invited you because you always invite them to your gala. Are you gonna include that organization in your will? Good point. Highly, highly unlikely near zero possibility. Good point. Let’s move on to, well, you have to, you have to shift from the models we’re in to something new because if we want different results, we have to do different activities and, and spend our time differently uh and allocate hours differently. Um Yeah. Uh it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s, it takes time but in the short term that, you know, you’re not going to get the planned gift in four or five years. But, but you’re cultivating the person for that conversation years from now with all the work that you’re all the work that you’re advocating us doing. Let’s, let’s, you got one more uh one more for, for converting to high. So we, yeah, so we talk, we’re gonna check that head count. Um You know, we gotta make sure fundraisers are not wearing too many hats. Ie all the mark. All the fundraising. Third thing is ok, so now we’ve removed the hats. Your fundraising team has to be properly trained. We can’t just one day say, ok, we’re gonna stop transactional. We’re gonna move to relational. People don’t know what that means. Uh Someone said to me once isn’t like I felt like individuals were, was relational and then like businesses and foundations were transactional. So, no, not at all. So I rarely meet a fundraiser who says I have a, I went to school for fundraising. I, I have a degree in this. Uh This is, this is what I, I’ve, I’ve dreamt of doing since I was four. No, everybody is in fundraising, whether you’re an executive director or on fundraising team from some wild journey. I mean, be included. Uh I, I was a program person. I was uh on the board. Uh I saw this need, this happened to be in my life and now all of a sudden, I’m a fundraiser and I kind of know enough to be dangerous, but I don’t know what, I don’t know. That’s what I hear all the time. And so that’s great that we have passionate people doing fundraising. Uh However, that is why they’re defaulting to what they’re seeing. The sector do, which is the transactional turn and burn. So if we simply just let them do that and try to keep grinding harder, you’re going to plateau back to our 95% comment. That is that to me is why that threshold exists. So the 95 the 95% is ok. The, but the, the your, your concern is that 95% of nonprofits never get over a million dollars in annual revenue and it’s 92%. I want to 92. Ok. Well, we want to help those folks. I don’t want to make sure you weren’t dissing the other 95 people that are listening. I want them all to be raising to their need so they can do more of their missions and if they don’t want to grow, that’s cool. Like keep doing what you’re doing and just keep killing it. But, you know, the 92% of nonprofits that are under a million, you know, 97% are under 5 million in annual revenue. Typically they have bigger visions and, and they could be serving more people, they could be moving to more regions. They want to do this kind of thing. And so don’t let the fear of investing in your staff or um you know, spending and investing in your team learning how to move into these activities. Don’t let that keep, let that be the thing that’s keeping you from achieving your mission when we’re talking about training, the training, you know, you know, another part of the problem is people do what they, what they grew up with, like when, when they were in school, their parents pt A had bake sales. So we need to have events. They’re not, they’re not literally doing bake sales, hopefully. But we know events because that’s, uh, the boy scouts, we used to raise money with, uh, light bulb sales with popcorn sales with the fertilizer sales with paper drives back when there was a, the, the, now I’m dating myself when paper it was, it was worth, it was worth recycling paper. I mean, it’s still worth it. But you could make, you could make money at it on a small scale. So that’s what they grew up with. But without training, they’re gonna fall back to their, to their girl scout and boy scout models. That’s not sophisticated, growth oriented scalable, professional fundraising. That’s not that, yeah, it’s not. And you know, it’s what does that look like? Sometimes people are like, I think we’re doing that. It’s like, well, but, but then if it’s, if we’re, we’re saying, hey, here’s three projects. Do you want to fund one of these or um, or, you know, let’s invite this major donor to an event and let’s put some extra big auction items on the event and hopefully they’ll get that. I mean, I hear this though. And so III I say to people are you able to put a plan together. Six months, 12 months, 18 months, based on that donor’s mission for giving, based on it being a win win, lead them on a journey to where when you ask them, if you can ask them that you’re confident they’re gonna give their best gift. And you know how to lead that conversation. You, you know, not only how to talk through the problem, the organization is solving the programs that you’re doing, the stories have changed lives, but you’re able to pivot into the investment level story to answer the tough financial questions to, um to lead that person, can I share with you how we’re funded, Tony to lead them through that and ask for their best gift and then get it and then do that every year. Are we doing that? Rarely? People are rarely. And so this is, you know, I’ll get up on my soapbox, you know, often times at the beginning of the calendar year, it’s like New Year Sherry. Would you like to speak on the cool new trends and creative things that fundraisers can be doing? I, I decline a lot of those, Tony because actually that’s what’s causing organizations from not growing of chasing the cool new thing. This, this process is actually really practical, methodical, natural human relationship building and having the skill set to then ask that donor and really offer that ex that opportunity to invest greatly. Uh I’d like to take it, I’d like to take it one step further. Go for it. You build these deep relationships and your donors will start telling you when they’re ready to make the next. I’m not saying that you wait for that. I’m not saying that at all, but I have that routinely. My work is planned giving routinely. I’m ready. I’m ready for a new gift, annuity. I, I wanna do another one. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m ready to have the conversation about, you know, a longer term gift. You’ll get the, the, it’s all the work that you’re describing all the work that you’re advocating for and the relationships become so deep that donors start telling you when they are ready. And again, if you don’t sit back and wait for that, you still have your needs and you still have your funding priorities, but you’ll get to the point where donors, some donors will, will share it with you and that, that they are ready and that takes time in a relationship. And we, we can’t build relationships when we’re on this f cycle, when to bring it back around. When our, when we’re expecting, our development leads to be a one size fits all shop and to do all the things. Uh We’re always gonna be chasing our talent. We’re never going to be raising to that number that we want to raise to and we’re always gonna have to kind of have this week by budget maybe the stretch budget. No, no. How do we fund the real need, the real need of your organization and then how do we resource it and how do we train the team to be doing the right things so we can do these awesome things that this sector is doing. We have big, big problems in the world to solve and we need to be doing the things that actually resource solving those problems. I think a part of the problem may be that it’s, it’s not very sexy. It’s not the latest thing. It’s not the hot trend for the New Year. This we’re talking about stuff that goes back. We, we’re talking about relationship building that goes back decades and generations. It’s just getting to know people and getting to the point where you can have these, I’m using intimate, not in a personal way, but doing business intimate. I’ll call it business, intimate relationships, business, intimate conversations. You can let them in to what your needs are to what the challenges are and invite them to help overcome them. You know, what a perfect uh kind of proof of this. Tony is oftentimes when I do board workshops and I’ll explain this kind of what we’ve done today. The board member who’s a, who’s a corporate person who’s, whose job is networking, whose job is sales, whose job is having great deep relationships with their clients. Um It’s funny to me usually in every training, someone will go. This, this is kind of what I do in my day to day life, but I’ve never thought about it in a fundraising capacity. That’s the ha moment we were talking about the board because we’ve been trained and sometimes they’re taking their cue from the staff and leader fundraising. Is this, send me 10 days for giving Tuesday. Here’s your linkedin Post uh email this holiday appeal to 10 people. We’ve been trained that that’s it. And we’re actually blocking the board from helping and networking because th that is what feels natural. This is what they’re doing, scaling and running their own businesses. So we’re actually like keeping boards from even being a highly effective networkers and fundraisers because they’re doing something that they think fundraising is, fundraising is over here. It’s relationship building and everything you just described is purely transactional. Yeah. All right. What haven’t we talked about that you wanted to? We, we have, we got some, some time left. What, what haven’t I asked you? What haven’t we talked about that? You want uh our listeners to know? Well, let me think about that. You know, here’s the other thing I’ll, I’ll just lay on top of this oftentimes. Um You know, I, I’ll just preface it with like I get to work with some of the most amazing leaders, executive directors who are subject matter, experts solving all of these incredible problems. Um Sometimes they don’t want to be fundraisers, right? Which an ex executive director is always a fundraiser. Um So oftentimes I find that even if it’s a larger organization, meaning like maybe there’s, let’s just say it’s like a $5 million organization, but maybe 4 million of that might be government funding or state funding. And so there’s kind of this smaller organization doing fundraising within the larger context of the organization. Uh, oftentimes that’s a subject matter expert who’s running that organization. Um And it kind of feels like, ok, so we need to grow that 1 million or that 750 we need to grow that time for a development director because I don’t wanna do the fundraising, the staff, I’ve probably said this, the staff on the board take their cue from the executive director, those top relationships in the pyramid, your executive director has to know how to do relational fundraising. Uh You, they have to know how to attract and keep a team that does relational fundraising. And so I just, I, I think I just lay on top of this of like, you need to invest in your team. Yes. And the executive director is the lead fundraiser on the fundraising team holder of the, the largest relationships likely or most complex relationships. However, you wanna look at that, you ed also have to know how to lead donors on amazing journeys and ask for what you need. Um That’s it, that, that’s why I, I work with the leader first the leader sets the tone for the organization, you know, culturally, you know, so many different ways, but also from a revenue generating standpoint. Uh And so it can’t just be, let me hire a fundraising team to fix the fundraising. I want them thinking how, what are the things we need to do that shift our organization into the activities that fully fund our mission every year. It’s a different angle. I follow you closely on linkedin and you have your Friday reframes. And I, so I want to propose a Friday reframe from, from executive director saying we need to hire a director of development because I don’t want to do fundraising anymore. Two, we need to hire our first director of development because I want to be more sophisticated in fundraising because I want someone to help me align my time with dollars around fundraising. You know what, when this launches, that’s gonna be my Friday reframe, right? And I’m gonna attribute you, you nailed it, you, you can’t, you, the, the CEO cannot absolve themselves of fundraising. It’s just that you need, you need to be more directed with the help of your development, your de your Chief Development Officer, Direct Development, whatever. Uh so that you’re, you’re, you’re speaking to the right people at the right time in the relationship and, and we’re cultivating them for an ultimate solicitation of, you know, an investment level gift. Yeah. And, and you know, if an executive director is hearing this and going, how would I do that? How would I, how would I have time in the day? I, I can’t even imagine that I go back to my advice I gave this morning. Let’s talk 10 hours, let’s talk five hours. Like that’s where you start, you have to move into those activities. Um, you have to model that for your staff and board. Um, oftentimes, then we throw something wild out. Like maybe you actually don’t need. Your first hire is not a development director. Gasp. What if the Ed actually could be bringing in 500 K more? And you had more of a development coordinator spinning the plates underneath that Ed and managing it and making sure all these relationships are, they were doing the pre email, the draft, the post, the follow up. What if that added 500 a million to your plate? Maybe you don’t need that development director first. There’s a, there’s a lot of options, Tony uh that I wish people would pause and you know, do that math equation and really, really weigh um that, that can yield more money than, than perhaps that they’ve been used to Sherry, Quam Taylor Outstanding. She’s CEO of she Yeah, my pleasure. She’s CEO of QM Taylor LLC. You’ll find them at kmail.com and you’ll find Sherry very active on linkedin. Uh What can I say? Thank you for sharing your thinking. Sherry, thanks for having me as always, love the conversation. My pleasure. Next week, empowering women. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and go giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box. Fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. I still love the alliteration, fast friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Pernetti. This show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the out of their 95% go out and be great.
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