Peter Shankman is a 5x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book “Zombie Loyalists” focuses on customer service; creating rabid fans who do your social media, marketing and PR for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired 12/19/14.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of brom hydros if I had to walk through the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce this week’s show. Hey, Tony now I’m on it. It’s zombie loyalists. Peter Shankman is a five time best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book, Zombie Loyalists focuses on customer service creating rabid fans who dear social media marketing and pr for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired December 19th 2014 on Tony’s Take Two. How’s your endowment were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org here is zombie loyalists. Peter Shankman is a well known and often quoted social media marketing and public relations strategist. His latest book is zombie loyalists. He wants you to create rabid fans who do your social media marketing and pr for you. He’s got super ideas and very valuable stories. I’m very glad Peter Shankman is with me in the studio. He’s the founder of Harrow, help a reporter out connecting journalists with sources in under two years from starting it in his apartment, Harrow was sending out 1500 media queries a week to more than 200,000 sources worldwide. It was acquired by Vocus in 2010. He’s the founder and CEO of the geek factory, a boutique social media marketing and pr strategy firm in New York City. Peter is on nasa’s civilian advisory council. You’ll find him at shankman.com and he’s at Peter Shankman on Twitter. His latest book is Zombie Loyalists using great service to create rabid fans. I’m very glad his book brings him to nonprofit radio and the studio. Welcome Peter. Good to be here, honey. Thanks. Pleasure you um live on the uh on the west side of Manhattan. I do. And you, there’s a, there’s a pretty well known five star steakhouse. Uh I’ll get Wolfgang’s not far from you, but you pass it to go to a different steakhouse. Morton’s correct. Why is that? I am a zombie loyalist to Morton’s. What does that mean? I uh love the service, the attention to detail, the quality, the, the sort of where everyone knows my name mentality. When I walk into that Mortons or any Mortons around the world, they have a tremendous uh custom relationship management system uh when I call one number uh in New York or anywhere in the world, it, it, they know who I am by my cell phone and uh I’m treated with uh just, you know, phenomenal uh uh happiness to, to hear from me and, and my wishes are granted as it were. I, we have a happy hour uh holiday party coming up at Morton’s next couple of days. And uh you know, as always, I forgot to call and make a reservation and, you know, I called yesterday and said, hey, I need a, uh, any chance I get a reservation for seven people, um, you know, Thursday night at, uh, 7 p.m. which is, you know, the, the week of the holiday party. And, uh, they looked and they said, oh, well, and then I guess their computer system kicked in, of course, Mr Shankman. Not a problem at all. We’ll get that for you right away. You know, we’ll have, we’ll have a great booth for you. Um, you know, and we’ll, we’ll, uh, tell us the names of the people attending, you know, you know, you know, they’re gonna have specialized menus for them and with their names on them. So they really, they have a really high level of service that, uh, that they provide. Not just to me that’s the beauty of it. I mean, you know, it’s one thing, yeah, it’s one thing if they just provide it to me, but they they do that for everyone. And, um, that is huge because, you know, being able to call when a normal person makes a reservation and, and not that I’m special, I’m actually rather abnormal. But, um, when a normal person makes a reservation and says, uh, you know, Morton says, ok, great. Are you celebrating anything? Oh, yeah, it’s my wife’s birthday. They always ask anyone who calls. I said, oh, you know what, it’s my wife’s birthday. Great. What’s her name? Her name is Megan or whatever. And you go in and they um and you sit down on the, on the, on the uh menu, it says Happy Birthday, Megan and then Megan, whoever she happens to be will spend the next 45 minutes, you know, taking 50 selfies with her menu and, and, and that’ll go online and then when her friends, you know, want that same experience, they’re gonna go Morton’s. You say uh in, in the book you get the customers you want by being beyond awesome to the customers you have. And that’s why I want to start with that Morton story which is in the middle of the book, but they do it for everybody and then they have the VIP S as well. And there’s the terrific story of you tweeting. Go tell that story. That’s a good story. It’s a good story. I love stories. I, I was flying home from a day trip to Florida and was exhausted and starving and, um, day trip mean you’re flying down, I flew down at 6 a.m. at a lunch meeting, flew back the same day. You know, one of those, one of those days. And, uh, I jokingly said the tweet, hey Mortons, why don’t you meet me at Newark Airport when I land with a poer house in two hours? Ha ha ha, ha, ha. Um, you know, I said it the same way you’d say, hey, winter, please stop snowing things like that. And I landed, uh, find my driver and sit next to my driver is a, uh, is a, a waiter in a tuxedo with a Morton’s bag. Uh, they saw my Tweet, they, they put it together, they managed to bring me a, uh, a, uh, steak and, and, you know, as great of a story as it is. That’s, that’s, it’s a great stunt and it’s a great story and it wasn’t a stage and it was completely amazing. But, you know, that’s not what they’re about. They’re not about delivering steaks to airports. They’re about making a great meal for you and treating you like royalty when you come in. And, you know, I, I, if they just did that, if they just delivered the steak at the airport, but their quality and service sucked. You know, it wouldn’t be a story. He said, oh, you know, look what they did for Peter, but I, you know, my steaks cold, you know, so what it really comes down to is the fact they do treat everyone like kings and that’s, that’s really, really important because what winds up happening is you have a great experience at Morton’s and then you tell the world, you know. Oh, yeah, great dinner last night. That was amazing. I would totally eat there again. And as we move to this new world where, you know, review sites are going away and I don’t, I don’t need to go to Yelp to read reviews from people. I don’t know, you know, if they’re shills or whatever the case may be, I don’t know, or tripadvisor, same thing. I want people in my network who I trust and, and people in their network who they trust and then by default I trust. So that’s gonna be, that’s already happening automatically. You know, when I, when I land in L A and I type in steakhouse, uh, you know, not me. I know, I know where the steakhouse are in L A but if someone types into Google Maps or Facebook steakhouse in Los Angeles, you know, they’ll see all the steakhouses on a Google map. But if any of their friends have been to any of them, they’ll see those first. And if they had a good experience, only if the sentiment was positive, will they see those first? And that’s pretty amazing because if you think about that, the simple act of tweeting out a photo. Oh, my God. Thanks so much, Mortons love this. That’s positive sentiment. The network knows that. And so if you’re looking for a steakhouse, you know, and your friend six months ago had that experience. Oh my God, amazing steak. This is a great place there. The sentiment is gonna be there and, and, and the network will know that the network will show you that steakhouse because you trust your friend. And this is where we start to cultivate zombie loyalists through this, through this awesome customer service of the customers. You, you have, uh say more about zombies. I mean, you have so many companies out there who are trying to get the next greatest customer. You know, you see all the ads, um, you know, the, the, the, the, the Facebook post, you know, we’re at 990 followers, our 10, our 1/1000 follower gets a free gift. Well, that’s kind of saying screw you to the original 990 followers who you had, who were there since the beginning? We don’t care about you. We want that 1000. You know, that’s not cool. Um, the, the, the companies who see their numbers rise and who see their fans increase and their, their, um, um, revenues go up are the ones who are nice to the customers. They have, hey, you know, customer 852 it was really nice of you to join us a couple of months ago. How, you know how are you, we, we noticed that you posted on something about a, uh, you know, your car broke down. Well, you know, we’re not in the car business but, you know, you’re, you’re two blocks from our, our closest, uh, outlet or whatever and, you know, once you, if you, if you need to come in, have a free cup of coffee, we’ll use the phone, whatever. You know, those little things that you can do that, that, that really focus on the customers you have and make the customers, you have the ones who are the zombies who tell other customers how great you are. And this all applies to nonprofits certainly as well. I mean, the, the, but even more so, I mean, if you, you know, nonprofits are constantly worried about how to, how to make the most value out of their dollar and how to keep the dollar stretching further and further. And, uh, you know, you have this massive audience who, who has come to you, who’s a nonprofit and who said to you, you know, we wanna help here, we are volunteering our help and just simply treating them with the thanks that they deserve. Not just a simple, hey, thanks for joining car, but actually reaching out asking what they want, asking how they like to get their information, things like that will greatly increase, um, your donations as well as, um, making them go out and tell everyone how awesome you are. And letting them do your pr for you. And that’s what a zombie loyalist does. And, and this is for, this could be, donors could be volunteers to the organization who aren’t able to give a lot. But giving time is enormous. And if, you know, if they have such a great time doing it, they’ll bring friends as, as zombies. Do you know, zombies have one purpose in life. Real zombies have one purpose in life that’s to feed. It doesn’t matter how the Mets are doing. It doesn’t matter, you know, because a chance that they lost anyway. But it doesn’t matter how, uh how anyone’s doing, you know, or what’s going on in the world economy. It doesn’t matter what matters with a zombie. Where are they gonna get their next meal? Because they feed and they have to infect more people otherwise they will die. Zombie loyalists are the same thing. All they have to do is make sure that their custom, they, they tell the world and we all have that friend who does it. You know, that one friend who eats, eats nothing but the Olive Garden because, oh my God, it’s greatest breadsticks everywhere. You know, and they will drag your ass to the Olive Garden every single time they get that chance. That’s a zombie loyalist. And you want them to do that for your nonprofit. And there’s, there’s a big advantage to being a smaller, a smaller organization. You could be so much more high touch and we’re gonna talk about all that. We got the full hour with Peter Shankman. We gotta go away for a couple of minutes. Stay with us. It’s time for a break. Open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations anywhere, anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team member required. Thus, your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your costs. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations in 2024 visit donor box.org to learn more. Now back to zombie loyalists, Peter, it doesn’t take much to uh stand out in the customer service world does it, it really doesn’t, you know, and the reason for that is because we expect to be treated like crap. You know, if you think that III I love this example. Whenever I give speeches, I ask, I ask everyone in the audience, I’m like, who here has had a great flight recently? At least one person will raise their hand. I’m like, ok, what made it great? And without fail, their answer said, well, we took off on time and, and I had the seat I was assigned and we landed on time and like, so you paid for a service, they delivered that service and you’re over the freaking moon about it. Like, that’s the state that we’ve become. You know, that’s how bad customer service has been that you are just beyond thrilled that they did exactly what they said they were gonna do with nothing more, less than 20 minutes in the post office line. And I’m ecstatic. Exactly. You know, it’s, it’s so, we really are at a point where we only have to be one level above crap. I, I’m not even asking my clients to be good. Just one level of crap. You know, if everyone else is crap and you’re one level above that, you’re gonna win. It’s my favorite, one of my favorite jokes. Um, the, uh, the two guys are out in the woods, hunting out in the woods and the, or just jogging out in the woods. The first one sees a, a bear and they see this bear and the bear is raised up and he’s about to strike. And the first one, you know, reaches down and tightens up his, his laces on his running shoes. And the second one says, dude, don’t be, don’t be, don’t be an idiot. You can’t run a bear. And he says, I don’t need to, I just need to outrun you. You know, I love that joke because it’s, it’s so true. That’s the concept. You know, all you have to do is be just a little bit better than everyone else and, and you’ll win the whole ball game. Now, we have to set some things up internally in order to have the, the structure in place to create these, the zombie loyalists. Yeah. I mean, you have a, you have a company where the majority of people in your company are afraid to do anything outside the norm. You know, I mean, look at, look at a cell phone company, you know, they, you call them because you have a problem right AT&T or T Mobile, you call them, you have a problem. They are actually the customer service people that handle your call are actually judged and rewarded based on how quickly they can get you off the phone. You know, not on whether or not they fix your problem, but how fast they can get you off the phone, which means how many more calls they get. I remember I worked, uh, when I worked in America online, we all had to do a day of customer service every month just to see what it was like, which I thought was a brilliant idea. But, you know, again, it’s this, it’s, it was a system called V I where you’d sign on and as soon as you signed on, if you weren’t in a call, you know, that was tacked against you. And if you were in a call and, and it went over a certain amount of time, that was tacked against you. So the decks were stacked not in the favor of the customer. There are some companies out there who allow their customer service employees to simply be smarter about what they do and do whatever it is they need to do to fix the problem. Um You know, my favorite story about this is Verizon Wireless. I, I went overseas, I was in Dubai and I landed in Dubai and I turned on my phone, I had gotten global roaming on my phone which, you know, 20 bucks for every 100 megabytes. Ok. So I land and I turn on my phone and it says, um, uh, like before I’m even off the plane, I get a text that you’ve used $200 in roaming charges. I’m like, what the hell, you know, $300 by the time I get off the plane, I’m like, something’s up here. So I call Verizon and a nice guy answered the phone and, oh, yes, I mean, you know, the first thing is it was, yes. So you do have global roaming but it, it doesn’t work in Dubai. So I’m like, ok, well, that’s not really global, that’s more hemispherical roaming I think is, is the issue. And um, so he, uh I said, well, look, I’m gonna be here for a week. I said, you know what? You have my credit card on file bill me like, I don’t know. Can you bill me like 1000 bucks and just let me have the phone for like the week and you know, that, you know, or 500 bucks, I won’t go over two gigs. Well, just do something for me. Sorry, sir. I’m not authorized to do that. Um, you can, I’m like, so what do I have? He’s like, well, you can pay, uh, $20.48 a megabyte. I’m like, I’m sorry, seriously, which equates essentially to, I would be charged $20.48 seconds, $20.48 for every, I think at the time for every four seconds of the video, Gangnam style if I decided to watch it on my phone, like this is pretty ridiculous. So I simply hung up, hung up on Verizon. I went down the street to the Dubai, the mall of the Emirates, which is the largest mall in the world. Has a freaking ski slope in it. And I’m not joking. It has a ski slope in this mall and uh went to one of like the 86 different electronic stores in this mall. Uh bought an international unlocked version of the same exact cellphone. I have went next door to the local uh SIM card store, bought a SIM card that gave me 20 gigabytes of data and 1000 minutes of talk for $40. I then put that in my phone because it’s an Android phone. I simply typed in my user name. And password for Google and everything imported. And Verizon did not get a penny on that trip. Um, how easy would have been for Verizon to say, ok, you know what, we’ll cut your break. Uh, they’d still make a lot of money off me and I would tell the world how great Verizon was to work with and how wonderful they, how helpful they were. Instead, they guaranteed that I will never, that they will never make a penny for me on any international trip. And I take what, 15 of them a year because now my cell phone, um my international cell phone that I bought, all I do is pop out the SIM card and I land wherever I am put in a new SIM card. So, and you’re speaking and writing and telling bad stories and every time I tell the story about Verizon, I make it a little worse. Apparently, Verizon uh tests out the durability of their phone by throwing them at kittens. I read this on the internet. It must be true, but, you know, not necessarily, but you know, the concept that, that all they had to do, all they had to do was empower Mark customer service and it wasn’t Mark’s fault. Mark was a really nice guy, but he was not allowed to do that. He would have gotten fired if he tried to do a deal like that for me. And so it’s this concept, you know, and the funny thing is, is it comes down to, if you really wanna go, go down the road in terms of a public company like Verizon of, of, of where the issue is, you could even trace it to fiduciary responsibility because the fiduciary responsibility of any company CEO all the way down to the employee is to make money for the shareholders. Ok. That’s what fiti responsibility means by not allowing me by not allowing mark the customer service agent to, to help me and, and take a different tack. He’s actually losing money too many CEO S think about the next quarter. Oh, we have to make our numbers next quarter. I’m fired. Companies in other countries tend to think about the next quarter century and they make a much bigger difference because they think, ok, what can we do now that will have impact in the next 5, 1015 years, you know, and really implement the revenue that we have and, and augment and companies in America. Don’t, don’t tend to think about that and that’s a big problem. Um, I, I buy a product line, uh, that has a lot of natural and recycled materials in the seventh generation. And their, um, their tagline is that in, in, in our every decision, we must consider the impact on the next seven generations. It comes from an American Indian. It’s a great, it’s a great line. I mean, just think about how much money Verizon would have made for me in the past three years. Just, just in my overseas, you’d be telling a story about like them, about Morton’s like the one about MS, you know, look, a lot of people listen to me and they went for a time when you googled roaming charges. When you Google Verizon roaming charges. My story about how I saved all this money came up first because I did the math. And if I had not called Mark and bought my own cell phone and done this, I would have come home to a $31,000 cell phone bill and you know, damn well, Verizon wouldn’t know anything about that. They’d be like, oh, too bad, sorry about the fine print. And plus the, the employee who sold you the international plan. I’m sure you told her where you going, I’m going to Canada and I’m going to Dubai. I’m assuming she didn’t know where Dubai was. She probably thought it was near Canada. But uh long story short, I couldn’t use it. All right. So employees have to be empowered. There has to be, we have to be but changing AAA thinking too. I mean, the customer has to come first. The donor of the volunteer donor, the teer you get at the end of the day. Where’s your money coming from? I don’t care if you’re a nonprofit or fortune 100. Where’s your money coming from? You know, and if you, we see it happening over and over again. We see it. Right. You’re seeing it right now. Play out every single day with the company, Uber. Um, and Uber, it’s so funny because Uber makes, uh, you know, they’re valued at $40 billion right now. But that doesn’t mean anything, that doesn’t mean anything if people are running away in droves which people are, there’s a whole delete your Uber app movement. Oh God. Yeah, people are leaving. Uh Well, it’s several. Number one that Uber is run by a bunch of guys who honor the bro code. The company was actually started by a guy who on business in business insider said he started the company to get laid. Um His goal was to always have a black car when he was leaving a restaurant uh to impress the girl he was with. That’s he came out and said that and you see that culture run rampant throughout Uber um from their God mode where they can see they actually created. There was a uh uh I don’t know where I read this. It might have been Business Insider as well. There was a, they created a hookup page that showed or, or, or, or a walk of shame page that showed where uh women were leaving certain apartments like on weekends and going or leaving certain place on weekends, going back to their home. Um It was obvious that they, you know, met some guy and they did that and then, of course, just their, their whole surge pricing mentality, which is, you know, two days ago there was a, uh, a couple of days ago there was a, uh, the terrorist, uh, I think it was a terrorist attack in Sydney, uh, at that, at that bakery and Sydney, uh, Uber in Sydney instituted surge pricing for people trying to get out of harm’s way. You know? And, and they, they later refunded it. Oh, it was a computer glitch. I’m like, you know, I’m sorry, you, you have a stop button and you can, when you see something happening like that, there has to be someone in the office who can say, you know what? Not cool. We’re gonna take care of that and then hit the stop button and it was, yeah, bad, tons and tons and tons of bad publicity. And, you know, I was having an argument with someone on my Facebook page at facebook.com/peter Shankman because they said, oh, you know, um, so what they don’t, they don’t turn on surge pricing. They don’t have enough cabs there and, you know, people can’t get home. I said I’m pretty sure that the only company I’m sure that no one had cab companies there. I’m sure that there wasn’t anyone who had enough cars there, private cabs, Ubers, whatever yet. The only stories I read about companies screwing up during that event were Uber, not Joe’s Sydney cab company. You know, I didn’t see him screwing it up because he didn’t turn on surge pricing. You gotta, you gotta respect your customer. You have to, as we’re uh training for that, then not only uh trying to change that mindset, well, in, in trying to change that mindset rewards for, for customer, for employees that, that do take go do go the extra mile. Well, first of all, if you give the employees the ability to do it to go the extra mile and understand they won’t get fired. You’re not gonna get in trouble. I I always tell, tell every one of my employees, you’re never gonna get in trouble for spending a little extra money to try and keep a customer happy. You’ll get fired for not doing it. You know, you get fired for not for seeing an opportunity to fix someone and not taking it, not doing everything that you know, Ritz Carlton is famous for that. Ritz Carlton hires people not because whether they could fold the bed sheet but for how well they understand people because in Ritz Carlton’s mind, it’s much more important to be a people person and be able to be empathetic and that is such a key word. Empathy is just so so sorely lacking. You know how many you’ve called customer service? Yeah. You know, I have to, I have to change my flight. My, my, my aunt just died. I really need to get home. Ok, great. That’s $300. I just wanna go an hour earlier, you know, you show up at the airport, your bag is overweight by half a pound. That’s $75. I just, I can, you can, you just cut me some slack. Nope, you know, so empathy and giving the cust, giving the employee the ability to understand that the customer that sometimes you can make exceptions and it is ok to make changes and, and this is where a smaller organization has huge advantage and it’s easier to change. That’s what kills me. You know, I go to these, I, I try to frequent small businesses when I can, I go to some of these small businesses and they won’t, they, they act like large businesses, you know, in the respect that, that they don’t have a, like, they wanna be respected almost. They don’t have like a six, a 6000 page code that they have to adhere to. They can simply, uh, do something on the fly and yet for whatever reason they won’t do it. And, and it’s the most frustrating thing is like, guys, you, you’re acting like a big, you’re acting like mega Laar here, you know, and you’re not Mega Lamar and you’re just Joe’s House of stationery, whatever it is and, you know, not being able to help me, you’re pretty much killing yourself because you don’t have 85 billion customers that have come through the door after me, you know. But I have a pretty big network and for a small business to get killed socially as social becomes more and more what, how we communicate. You know, it’s just craziness. It’s, you know, we’re, we’re pretty much in a world, I think where something almost hasn’t happened to you. Unless, unless you share it. I joked that, uh, you know, if I can’t take a selfie was I really there. Um, but it’s true, you know, we, we do live in a world where, you know, I, I remember God 10 years ago, maybe not even, not even 10 years ago. I was one of the first people to have a phone in my camera, you know, and it was like a new phone. That’s what I said, yeah, camera in my phone, right? And it was like a uh I think it was like a 0.8 megapixel. You know, it looked like I was taking a picture with a potato but it was, um it was this, I remember it was 2002 and I was in Chase Bank and there was a woman arguing with the teller and I pulled out my video, you know, it was, I mean, it was the crappiest video you’ve ever seen. But I pulled it out and I said, you know, II I started recording and the, the woman behind the woman behind the counter was going, the woman behind the counter was talking to the customer saying you do not speak to me that way. You get out of this bank right now. And the customer was saying I just wanted my balance and you and the manager comes over and I get this whole thing on my little crappy three G uh Motorola phone phone. And I, I remember I posted online and gawker picks it up and II I gave him, I, I emailed it, you know, I, my, the headline I put on my blog was, you know, Chase where the right relationship is at. Go after yourself, you know, and it was, and it just got tons of play and then gawker picked it up. It went everywhere, totally viral. So it’s one of those things you’re just like, you know, this is in 2002. It’s 12 years later. How the hell can you assume that nothing is being that you’re not being recorded? You know, I, I, I remember blowing, I, I sneezed a couple of weeks ago and, and, uh, uh not to get too graphic here, but it was, I, I needed a tissue big time after I was done sneezing. And I remember going through my pockets looking for desperately looking for tissue and like looking around making sure I wasn’t on camera somewhere that someone didn’t grab that and it was give me the next viral sensation, you know, I mean, I wait, God, I went to high school with eight blocks from here, right? If the amount of cameras that are in Lincoln Center today. Were there in 1989 1990. I’d be having this conversation entirely. I’d be having this conversation behind bulletproof for myself. And you’d be, yeah. So, you know, you’d be, you’d be talking to me, you’d have to get special clearance to visit me. Probably be at the, the Super Max in Colorado or something. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s one of those things that you’re just like my kid who’s, who’s almost two years old now is gonna grow up with absolutely no expectation of privacy the same way that we grew up with an expectation of privacy. And I’m thankful for that because she will make a lot less stupid moves. You know, I mean, God, the things that I thought, you know, in, in, in, in high school, I thought the stupidest thing in the world. Thank God. There wasn’t a way for me to broadcast that to the world in real time. Jeez. Thank God creating these uh zombie loyalists. And you know, we’ve got to change some, we’ve got to change culture and thinking and reward systems. Let’s go back to the, the cost of all this. Why is this a better investment than trying to just focus on new donors? I, I love, I love this analogy and I’ll give you a fun analogy. Let’s, I’m in a bar and there’s a very cute girl across the, across the bar and she catches my eye catch her, I go up to her and I go, you know, you don’t know me. I am amazing in bed. You should finish your drink right now. Come home. Let’s get it on. I’m, I’m gonna impress I’m that good chances are she’s gonna throw a drink in my face. Go back talking to her friends. I’ve done a lot of research on this. That’s probably something I was gonna do now. Let’s assume, let’s assume an alternate world. I’m sitting there on my phone, I’m just playing like, you know, some, you know, words with friends or something like that. And, uh, she’s over there talking to her friends and one of her friends look up said, holy crap. That’s Peter. I think that’s Peter Shankman. I’ve heard him speak. I, he’s in this fantasy world. I’m single too today. He, I think he’s single and he’s having this amazing guy. I, I know he has a cat. You have a cat. You should totally go talk to him at the very least. I’m getting this girl’s number. That’s pr ok. And what do we trust more? Me with my, you know, fancy suit collar going over there in my seventies, leisure suit. Hi. I’m amazing. Or the girl saying, hey, we’ve been friends since third grade. I’m recommending that guy. You should trust me on this. You know, obviously that, that’s where, uh, good customer service comes into play and that’s where corporate culture comes into play because if I have a great experience with you and at your company, I’m gonna tell my friend when they’re looking and I will stake my personal reputation on it and there’s nothing stronger than that. And these are the people who want to breed as Zz Willis that’s stronger than advertising, stronger than marketing. And they’re gonna share, people wanna share that. Think about the, the internet runs on two things. It runs on drama, drama, and bragging or bragging and drama. And if you, if you need uh any proof of that, you know, go and look at all the hashtags with crap that’s happened, you know, bad customer service, bad whatever. But then look at all the good hashtags you know it when our flights delayed for three hours and we lose our seat. Oh my God, I hate this airline, you know, worst airline ever but when we get upgraded, right? Hashtag first class bitches or whatever it is, you know, something stupid like that and the whole because we love to share. It’s, it’s only a great experience if we could tell the world and it’s only a bad experience if we can make everyone else miserable about it as well. Its time for Tonys take two. Thank you, Kate. How’s your endowment endowment? That savings account that your nonprofit has that you only spend the interest of each year and maybe sometimes you don’t even spend that much from year to year planned giving. Can help you either launch your endowment if you don’t have one or grow your endowment if it needs to be bigger. And I don’t know many nonprofits that think uh we have enough, our endowment is big enough. We don’t need any more and giving accelerator. I will help you in the accelerator to launch planned giving so that you can start your endowment or grow your endowment throughout the three months of the course, We go March to May done by Memorial Day. So there’s no impinging on your summer plans. We’ll spend an hour a week together on Zoom over those 12 weeks and I will guide you step by step. Had a launch Planned Giving at your nonprofit. I set those weekly meetings up as meetings in Zoom. So there’s lots of cross talk between the members. People are helping each other. There’s a lot of peer support. Uh Aside from the teaching that I’m doing uh each week, if thats of interest to you, please check out Planned Giving accelerator.com promoting the course in uh the rest of this month. And then it starts in early March. That is Tony’s take two Kate. It sounds like a very valuable course. We hope people join. Yes, we do. You’re right about that. We’ve got Buku but loads more time. Let’s go back to zombie loyalists with Peter Shankman. Peter. You have a uh golden rule of social media that a good number of customers like to share and people are gonna keep doing it. People will always share. Um, again, it goes back to the concept that if you create great stuff, people wanna share it because people like to be associated with good things. If you create bad stuff and by stuff, I can mean, I mean, anything from like a bad experience to bad content, people not only won’t share that, but we go out of their way to tell people how terrible you are. Um, you know, how many times have you seen companies fail horribly, uh, you know, after major disasters when companies are tweeting, um, you know, completely unrelated things. Uh, uh, after, after a random school shooting. Uh, no, it was after the, uh, the, the shooting at the, the theater in Aurora, Colorado at the Dark Knight. Um, the Nr A tweets, hey, shooters, what’s your plans for this weekend? You know, and I’m just sitting there going really, you know, but, and of course, the thing was, the thing was retweeted millions of times, you know, with a sort of shame on the NR A. So we, we’re a society like I said earlier that loves to share when, when great things happen to us, but loves to tell the world when we’re miserable because we’re only truly miserable when we make everyone else miserable around us. Um, it’s funny you mentioned, uh, um, the Generosity series, uh, the, one of my favorite stories which goes to sort of a uh a bigger picture of culture and um somehow when you’re just doing your job because that’s what you’re, you’re supposed to do your job. But you don’t realize there are ways to get around that. I, I listen to your podcast among others uh when I’m running through Central Park. Um and more like if you know, my body type, more like lumbering through Central Park. But I, I get there, I’m an iron man. I have, I have that and um so I go through Central Park and it’s super early in the morning because I usually have meetings and I don’t run fast. Um I run like, I really don’t run fast but, but as I’m running, but let’s give you the credit. You have done a bunch of iron man. I do, I do it. You know, my mother tells me that I just have very poor judgment in terms of what sports I should do. But um on the flip side, I’m also a skydiver, which is with my weight is awesome. I fall better than anyone. Um But uh so I’m running through Central Park last year. It was February, uh February 13 and 14. It was of this year. And um it was probably around 445 in the morning because I had a uh I had an 8 a.m. meeting and I had to do 10 miles. So 445 in the morning, I’m running at around 90 79th 80th street on the east side in the park. And a cop pulls me over and he says, what are you doing? And I look at him, you know, I’m wearing black spandex. I have a hat. It’s five degrees and I’m like, what, what playing checkers? You know what, you know, I’m like, I’m running and he, he’s like, ok, can you stop running? I’m like, ok, he’s like the park’s closed. I’m like, no, it’s not like I’m in it. Look around, there are other people. No park doesn’t open until 6 a.m. I’m like, he’s like, uh, do you have any idea on you? I’m like, no, I’m running. He goes, what’s your name? I’m like, seriously. He said, I’m writing you a summons. I’m like, you’re writing me a summons for exercising for I for ex, I just wanna clarify this. You’re writing music and sure enough, the guy wrote me a summons for exercising in Central Park before it opened. The, the charge was breaking the violating curfew. You know, I’m like, I get the concept of the curfew. It’s to keep people out after 2 a.m. It’s not to prevent them from going in early to exercise, to be healthy. I’m like, I’m not carrying, you know, a six pack. I’m not drinking a big gulp. I’m not smoking. I’m, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m doing something healthy and you’re writing me a summons for it. Um, and I said, you know, I’m gonna have a field day with this. I said iii I kinda have some followers. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I’m not, you know, I know you’re just doing your job, sir, even though you have the discretion not to. But ok, so I go back home, I take a picture of my ticket. I email it to a friend of mine of the New York Post, you know, front page, New York Post next day. No, running from this ticket, you know, front page, of course, that’s great. New York Times covered it. Uh Runners world covered it. I mean, I went everywhere, gawker covered it, you know, and, and my whole thing was, it’s just like, dude, you have discretion. Look at me, you know, I’m not, I’m not even going super fast for God’s sake. I’m just, I’m just trying to exercise here, you know, and of course I went to court and I, I beat it. But how much money did it cost the city for me to go to court? Fight this thing. You know, every employee you have to give your employees the power of discretion, the power of empathy to make their own decisions. If you go by the book, bad things will happen. And again, small shops so much easier to do flat line flat organizations. I, I work with a nonprofit um animal rescue, no profit. Um A friend of mine was a skydiver and uh shout him out. What’s the, I can’t, there’s a reason I can. But, but there’s a friend of mine was a skydiver and she was killed in a base jump several years ago. And her husband asked to donate in her memory to this nonprofit. So I sent him a check. And about three months later I get a coffee table book in the mail. And I was living by myself at the time I didn’t own a coffee table. It was, you know, more money to spend on my flat screen. And um I uh I remember I call, I, I look at this coffee table, I throw, I throw it in the corner, I look at it over the next couple of days. It pisses me off about how much, how much of my donation did it cost to print mail and produce this book to me. And so I, I called them up. Well, sir, we believe most of our donors are older and probably prefer to get a print version as opposed to like digital, you know, where they’d throw it away and like, you don’t throw digital away, but ok. Um I’m like, so, so you’ve asked your, you’ve done surveys and you’ve asked all, no, we just assume that most of them are older. I’m like, ok, so I opened my mouth wound up joining their board and I spent the next year interviewing uh customers interviewing every current and past donor about how they like to get their information and shock of shock, 94% said online. And so over the following year, we launched Facebook page, Twitter page, uh um uh Flickr account, uh youtube everything PS The following year for that donations went up 37% in one year. In that economy. It was right around 0809 donations went up 37% in one year and they saved over $500,000 in printing, mailing and reproduction. Imagine going to your boss, hey, boss, revenue is up 37% and we saved a half million dollars. Your boss is gonna buy you a really good beer. You know, all they had to do was listen to their audience be relevant to the audience you have and they will tell you what they want. We have tons of tools for segmentation. You gotta listen to what segment you wanna, people wanna be in. You know, someone, someone asked me the other day. So what, what’s the best? I, I knew nothing about their company. What’s the best uh social media I left for me to be on, should I be on Twitter or should I be on Facebook? I said, I’ll answer that question if you can answer this, this question, I’m gonna ask you is my favorite type of cheese Gouda or the number six. And they say, I don’t understand. That’s not a real question. I’m like, neither is yours. Like I can’t tell you where the best place to be your audience? Can I said, go ask your audience, believe me, they will tell you there’s a gas station in the Midwest. Come and go. Um, I, I just love the name Kum and go, come and go and you can read more about the, their tagline is always something extra. I mean, come on the jokes, just write them for god’s sake. But, um, and they don’t take themselves too seriously. I love that and knowing the name of the company gas station. And, um, you know, I, I like, I remember they were in Iowa and I went up to visit a friend in Iowa and I was like, you gotta get a photo of me in front of the come and go sign, you know, and, um, the beauty of this is that some of their employees actually look at their customers when they’re on their phones in the stores and go, oh, you know, what do you use Twitter more? Or Facebook? And they say, oh, I use that and they record that information and they know it. God customers will give you so much info if you just ask them because then they feel invested, they feel invested in your company. They feel like they, that you took the time to listen to their nonprofit request or their, their, their questions and they feel like they’re, I did it for Harrow every month. We’d have a one question. Harrow survey, you know, Harrow one question survey. And it was, we get like 1000 people respond and I’d spend the entire weekend emailing everyone who responded and thanking them personally, took my entire weekend. But it was great because what would wind up happening is that, you know, if we took their advice and launched it on Monday with the new thing? They go, oh my God. How did this for me? They took my advice. Well, yeah, it was your advice to 800 other people’s advice. But we took it and they’d be like, oh my God, it’s a good thing. And, and it just, it just made them so much more loyal and they’d tell hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people we’d get, I mean, there were days my God, there were days I remember I was in temple one morning, the garment center synagogue and my phone, I feel my phone getting really hot in my pocket, which is not normal and I was starting to hurt and I look at it, I, it’s, it’s almost on fire. It had frozen because we were mentioned in Seth Godin’s morning blog. And at that time I was getting uh emails every time we get a new subscriber and the phone is actually frozen and was locked and, and was like overheating. I take out the battery and like reset the entire phone because we just got so many new, like 14,000 subscribers in like three hours. It’s obscene, it’s obscene. You say, excuse me, you say uh that customer service is the new advertising. Marketing. N pr It really is. Well, again, you know, if we’re moving into that world where, so imagine a lava lamp. And I love that. I can use this analogy. Imagine a lava lamp. A lava lamp has water, oil and a heat source, right? The heat source heats the oil, the oil flows through the water. It makes pretty colors. I’ve heard it looks really good when you’re high. Now, I’ve heard. Now, imagine if, oh, crystals. Imagine if you’re, uh, everyone you meet in your network. Ok. Is a drop of oil? The water is your network and the water is your world. Everyone you meet in your network. Uh, from, from the guy you’re sitting doing the radio interview with, to the guy who serves you ice cream with local deli to the guy who does your dry cleaning to your girlfriend, to your wife. To not at the same time to your kid’s second grade teacher, to your second grade teacher years ago. Everyone you meet is in your network. You know, right now when Facebook first started, I would see the same weight from a kid. I went to junior high school with, he, his post would have the same weight as like my current girlfriend. Which is ridiculous. I don’t need to know about everything. My friend from junior high school is doing. I haven’t talked to the kid in 15 years. Facebook’s gotten a lot smarter as has Google. Now, I see the people I communicate with the most. Ok. And if I, if I reach out and communicate with new people, they start rising in my feet in my stream. If I don’t they fall, it’s just like a lava lamp. Every person you connect with is a drop of oil. That heat source at the bottom that’s rising, raising or lowering. Those drops of oil is relevance. So if you imagine the heat source is relevance and the more I interact with someone, the more the higher they go in my network and the more I see of them, the more trust level there is when I’m at a bar and I meet someone or at a restaurant or conference, I meet someone. I don’t need to um connect them. I don’t need to go on Facebook and friend request them. You know how awkward friend requesting is when you stop and think that last time my friend requested someone in the real world was second grade. Will you be my friend? My daughter’s doing that now she goes, you know, she goes, it’s like the cat. Will you be my friend? I’m like, honey, the cat doesn’t wanna be your friend. But you know, it’s this awkward thing who the hell friend requests someone anymore. If I’m, if I’m hanging out with you at a bar and we connect again and we talk and we go out to dinner and we’re having a good time. We’re friends. I don’t need to first request that you, you know, so that’s going away. Friending following liking and fanning is all going away. What will interact is the actual connection. So, if I meet with you and I have a good time with you and we talk again if I use your business. If I go to your nonprofit, if I donate, if I volunteer, whatever the network knows that the more I do that, the more I interact with you, the more you have the right to market to me and the more you will be at the top of my stream and the more I will see information about you, the less I will have to uh uh search for you. But if you do something stupid or we’re no longer friends see you, you’re gonna fade. I don’t have to unfriend you. You just disappear. Unfriending is also awkward. I dated a woman. We broke up, but it was nine months after we broke up, either of us wanted to unfriend the other one because it was just awkward. So I, I woke up in front of me anyway. But you know, the concept of not having to, to do that of just, you know, OK, I haven’t talked to you in a while. I don’t see your posts anymore. It’s the real world. That’s how it should be, and if you’re not feeding zombie loyalists, they can start to defect. So I, I want to spend a little time on if you’re not talking to them, giving them what they want, talking about their information, helping them out, they will gladly go somewhere else to someone who is, you know, if I have a great experience with the restaurant, uh, every week for three years and then all of a sudden over time, I’m noticing less and less that restaurant’s doing less and less to uh take care of me, you know, and maybe management’s changed and I don’t feel that uh you know, I’m ripe for being infected by another company. I’m ripe for someone else to come and say, you know, Peter. Uh cause if I tweet something like, wow, I can’t believe I have to wait 40 minutes for a table. It didn’t used to be like that. If I, if someone else is a smart restaurant, they’re following me and they’re gonna be great. You know what, Peter? There’s no way, no way over here. Why don’t you come two blocks north and we’ll give you a free drink, you know. Oh, you know, and that right there, that’s the first sign of infection and I might become infected by, by another company, become a zombie loyalist for them. And so let’s, let’s take, you have a lot of good examples. Let’s take a one on one situation. How can we start to cure that. The simple act of realizing following your customer’s understanding when they’re not happy and fixing the situation before it escalates. Um you know, you can contain a small outbreak, a small outbreak, small viral outbreak. You can contain that by getting the right people finding out what the problem is, getting them into one room, fixing their problem, healing them. You have a good uh united story right back when it was Continental, I was uh a frequent flyer and booked a trip to Paris and uh I was very angry because they charged me like $400 in, in booking fees or something like that. I don’t remember what it was. And, uh, I called the CEO, I just, just for the hell of it. I’m like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I wrote, I wrote an email, this was before social and I wrote an email to the CEO and I’m like, this is ridiculous. I’m a frequent da da da da and like 30 minutes later my phone rings like, hello Peter Jman, please hold for Larry Kellner CEO of cotton lines. I’m like, oh crap. You know, and the guy gets on the phone, he’s like Peter, how you doing, Mr Jman? How are you doing? Sorry, listen, these fees, they’re new. Um, we sent them a note, I’m guessing you didn’t see it. We’re gonna waive them for you. But, uh, if you have any more problems, you know, feel free to call me and I hang up the phone for the next 40 minutes just sort of staring at it like, holy crap. Larry Kellner, the CEO of United Airlines just called me and, uh, talk to me and I mean, it was like, it was like God coming down and say you now have the power to levitate your cat. It was just ridiculous. And, um, so, you know, I have been faithful to Continental and now United ever since and, and they continue to treat me with respect and, and do great things and they’re, they’re improving. They, they were getting a lot of crap over the past several years and they really are starting to improve. It’s nice to see and not only, of course, your own loyalty but you’re a loyal guy. You’re a zombie loyalist for them. And how many times how, how much it’s unquantifiable. It’s un, I, I dragged so many friends to United. I’ve, I’ve made so many friends. Uh, I mean, my father, you know, uh, he only flies United now, which means he only drag, he drags my mom only on United. I only dragged my wife on United. There’s a lot of, a lot of work that way. Yeah, we gotta go away for a couple of minutes when we come back. Of course, Peter and I are gonna keep talking about his book comes out in January, zombie loyalists. You have some examples of zombie loyalist leaving en masse like Dominoes, Netflix. They’re both, they’re both in the book. So, so one leaving, if you don’t, if you’re not starting to cure one leaving and then that’s the thing, you know, the beat will be the internet with the hashtags and everything like that, you know, it doesn’t take a long time um for those things to sort of blow up in your face. And, uh, you know, at the end of the day, everyone say, oh, you know, Twitter’s responsible for, for us losing money. No, they’re not. You’re responsible for you losing money. You know, and, and if your product isn’t great and you, your actions don’t speak well of who you are, then there’s no reason your customers should stay with you, you know, and it was, oh, social media is really hurting us because no, you’re hurting yourself. The only difference is that social media makes it easier for the world to know about. They’re just telling the story. Dominos and Netflix are, are good examples because they, they bounced back. They took responsibility and they both owned the Dominoes came out and said, you know what? You’re right. Our pizza, we do have a problem. We’re gonna fix this and they spent millions fixing it. And sure enough, they’re back with a vengeance. Now, I’m, I may or may not even have ordered them every once in a while. And I live in New York City. That’s, that’s a, that’s a sacrilege. But, um, you know, I have the app on my phone for when I’m over, you know, traveling somewhere. I’ll be in shea, whatever. And, and you know, what are you gonna get at 1130 at night when your flight’s delayed and you land? It’s Domino. Um, which reminds me I should probably go exercise on the flip side, you know, something like Netflix. They, uh, they also were screwing up, you know, they were losing, they tried to switch between the two. They came up with a new name and it was like gross in public. And so, and again, you’re watching the same thing happen with Uber right now. So it’ll be really interesting to see if they were able to repair themselves. Listening is important. Both, both those, both, those two examples, they listen to their customers. I think there’s a problem with listening because everyone’s been saying, listen, listen, listen for months and years and years and years now. But, you know, no one ever says that you have to do more than just listen. You have to listen, actually follow up. It’s one thing to listen. You know, I, I use the example of my wife, I could sit there and listen to her for hours, you know, but if I don’t actually say anything back, she’s gonna smack me, you know, and go to the other room. And so you really have to, it’s a two way street, you know, listening is great, but you gotta respond and uh look, I’ll take it a step further. I was like, oh, Twitter’s so great because someone was complaining on Twitter and we went online and we, we saw the complaint and then we fix their problem and yeah, how about if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? You know, because the great thing about Twitter is that, yeah, people complain on Twitter. The bad thing about it is they’re complaining about on you’re on Twitter. So it’s like, what if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? What if, what if you empowered your front desk clerk to fix the problem so that I didn’t have to tweet. Uh Hertz is my favorite story of all this. Uh I used to rent from Hertz religiously. Um And then I went to uh Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport this past April and I gave it, I was giving a speech and I, I go and I, my name is supposed to be on the board, you know, so I can go right to my car and it wasn’t, it was ok. That happens. I got upstairs, I wait 40 minutes on the VIP line. Um After 40 minutes they finally say, you know, there’s a uh only one guy here, a lot of people might have a better chance if we go up to the regular line. Like, ok, you probably could have told us that a little earlier, go up to the regular line. Spend 45 minutes waiting in the regular line. It’s now been. Are you tweeting while this is happening? Well, I had, I was actually not only tweeting, I had enough time to create a meme that should give you some idea of how long I was online with my cell phone. I was enough time to have a meme. I get it to the counter. Hi, can I help you? Yeah. Um I, I was downstairs at the VIP desk and they told me that oh your VIP reservation you have to go downstairs like yeah. Ok, let’s let’s put a pin in that. Um they just sent me up here like uh right. They have to help you. Well, it’s not really, they, you guys are the same company. I mean I could see the reservation on the screen. You, you, you, you can help me. Sorry sir, I can’t help. You have to go to the VIP next. I’m like you just next to me. Ok. So if you know anything about Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, um all of the rental car company, they’re all in the same place. So I walked 50 feet. It’s a bus takes you to the big to the big pavilion where they’re all next to each. I walked 50 ft from the cesspool of filth and depravity that was hurt to the, the wonderful Zen Garden of tranquility. That was Avis. And in four minutes I had a nicer cheaper, more or a nicer less expensive car given to me, a woman named Phyllis who was 66 and moved to Phoenix from Detroit with her husband for his asthma. I knew this because she told me, um, she smiled at me. She brought her manager out and said, ah, it’s another refugee from, uh, Hertz. And I said, so this happens a lot. They’re like, yeah, I’m like, wow, you’d think they’d have done something about that. And so on the way out in Avis. Um I, I thank them, I walk past hers. I shoot them this, you know, sort of look at the look of the beast. I get my Avis car and I drive to my hotel. Once I get to my hotel, I write a wonderful blog post about my experience called Peter and Hertz and the terrible, horrible, no good, really bad customer experience. Once you have a kid, you find up rewriting titles about your blog posts that have to do with kids books. Um I do not like Hertz Sam. I am and things like that. And um I included in this blog post, the five things I’d rather do than ever. Uh ran from Herz again, I think number three was um was uh ride a razor blade bus through a lemon juice waterfall um with just, you know, and, and so, but, but of course, the next day Hertz reaches out to me. Oh Mr Jman, this is the head of North American customer service. That’s all you’re about. I’m like, they’re like, you know, we’d love to let Nick know like you, you’re not gonna fix the problem. Number one because I’m gonna Nas Car. I’m never going back to Hertz. Number two. There were five people yesterday, five people I interacted with all of whom had the chance to save me and keep me as a customer for life. A, a customer who had been so happy and I would have loved you. Five people blew it. So don’t waste your time trying to convert me back. You’re not going to what you wanna do is spend some of that energy, retraining your staff to have empathy and to give them the ability and the empowerment to fix my problem when it happens because five people it it takes every single employee to keep your company running, it takes one to kill it. Yeah. PS Avis reached out um to thank me personally and uh I am now just this ridiculously huge loyal fan of Avis and always will be you have a pretty touching story about uh when you worked in a yogurt shop, you were really young. Um We have a couple of minutes tell that, tell that good story. That was on the east side, which again is another reason why I live on the west side. Nothing good ever happens in Manhattan’s East side. So I was uh I was working and I can’t believe it’s yogurt, uh, which was a store that I think back in the eighties IC by. No, no. TCBY was the country’s best yoga. IC biy was a poor, I can’t believe it’s yo, I can’t believe it’s not yoga. I can’t believe it. Yogurt. It was a poor attempt to capitalize on. That was TCB. And I’m working at this store and, um, I go in every day and make the yogurt to clean the floors. I do. You know, it’s a typical high school job and, uh, it was during the summer and thousands of people walking by, I think it was like Second Avenue or something. And there were these brass poles that hung from, you know, it was the, the, the, there was an awning, right? That’s a, that there and there were the brass poles that held the awning up and they were dirty as hell. Right. I’m sure they’d never been polished ever. And I found some, I found some brass polish in the back like, oh, they buried in the back. And one afternoon I went outside and IP started polishing the poles. My logic was if the poles were shiny and people saw them, maybe they come into the store, maybe they’d wanna, you know, buy more nice clean place. And the manager came out. What the hell are you doing? I said, I told him what I thought, I don’t pay you to think, get inside. You know, I’m like, there’s no customers in there. I’m like, ok, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll make sure the yogurt’s still pumping it full blast. And I quit, I just quit that job. Like, I mean, I, I couldn’t even begin to understand why someone would invest, I mean, to own a franchise for 50 grand, to at least to buy that franchise. Why wouldn’t he invest in the two seconds? It took little elbow grease to make the poll clean That might bring in more customers. What the hell? You know, but you’re not paid to think. You’re not paid to think. My favorite line. Yeah. Um, I, I just, I, I encourage if any kids are listening to this teenagers. If you, if your boss says that to you quit, quit, I will hire, you just quit. It’s, it’s, it’s probably the worst thing in the world that you could possibly do because you have customers who you have customers who every day can be helped by people who are paid to think. And that’s the ones you wanna hire. We gotta wrap up. Tell me what you love about the work you do. I get paid to talk. I mean, my God, this is the same stuff. I used to get in trouble for in high school, but on a bigger picture, what I really love about it is being able to open someone’s eyes and have them come back to me. Um, I run a series of masterminds called Shank Minds Business. Masterminds. It’s shank minds.com. They’re day long seminars all around the country. And, uh I had someone come to me and say, you know, I took your advice about XYZ and I, I started listening a little more and I just got, uh, the largest, um, retainer client I’ve ever had in my life by a factor of four. And she goes, and I just can’t even thank you and I send me like a gorgeous bottle of tequila. She’s like, I can’t even thank you enough. Oh my God. Being able to help people, you know, at the end of the day, we’re, we’re, I, I have yet to find another planet suitable for life. I’m looking so we’re all in this together. And if that’s the case, you know, why wouldn’t we want to help people just a little bit more? You know, there really isn’t a need to be as douche as we are as a society. We could probably all be a little nicer to each other and you’d be surprised how that will help. The book is Zombie Loyalists. It’s published by Palgrave macmillan comes out in January. You’ll find Peter at shankman.com and on Twitter at Peter Shankman, Peter. Thank you so much. Pleasure is Amanda. Oh, thank you. Next week. That’s an open question. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking the supporter generosity donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.
Amy Berman, Caitlin Mitchell, Daniel Werner, Anthony Sanchez & Christine Kang:Build Your Grantmaker Relationships Our panel of grantmakers and a grantee reveal savvy strategies for building and maintaining relationships with your institutional funders. Foundations are made of people. How do you get close to them? This is a panel I moderated at The Foundation Center in New York City. Back when there was a The Foundation Center. It’s now Candid.org. (Originally aired February 16, 2018)
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[00:00:06.34] spk_0:
Okay.
[00:00:58.72] spk_1:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of follicular assis if you made me go lymph with the idea that you missed today’s show. Build your grantmaking relationships. Our panel of grantmakers and a grantee reveals strategies for building and maintaining relationships with your institutional funders. Foundations are made of people. How do you get close to them? This is a panel I moderated at the foundation center in New York City back when the foundation center existed. Uh, so, uh, going back couple of years? Um, that’s it. That’s all I got to say about that On Tony’s take to 20 ntc thank you’s were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turn, to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. Here is the start of build your grantmakers relationships.
[00:05:40.86] spk_2:
We’re here to talk about collaboration and impact collaborate an impact. And our panel today is gonna focus in the collaboration. We’re gonna be talking about the relationship building of collaboration, that aspect of collaboration between non profits and the funders. All right, Most of you are in non profits potential grantees and most of our panel are the funders. So I have vidi admonished is too strong a word. But I have urged them to keep their advice, you know, relevant for potential grantees. How can each of you, in your non profits collaborate, build relationships with potential funders and even even when even when you get a no from a funder, what can you do after that? Our concern is that this is seen is proceeding to transactional. It shouldn’t be transactional. Your relationship with potential grant oars potential funders can be parallel to the work that you do in individual fundraising in each of your individual program. Because funders air made up institutions are made up of people and we know people fund what they believe in. So how can you build the relationship, keep the relationship strong even in the face of a rejection, and thereby collaborate with your potential funders which hopefully will become your funders. It’s my real pleasure to introduce our winning panel. Beginning with your on your left is Caitlin Mitchell. Caitlyn is a program and evaluation officer with Empower the Emerging Markets Foundation. Their work is around at risk youth in emerging markets in Colombia, Mexico and South Africa. Next, moving to your right. Dan Werner Dan is Social Justice program associate with the darkest foundation. Their priority is LGBT social justice, and we have Amy Berman. She’s senior program officer at the John John A Hartford Foundation, and their work is around improving, improving the health of older adults. Christine Kang, associate program manager at Project Sunshine. She is our sole Panelists who is among you apart part of the non profit 501 C three community, and their work at Project Sunshine is direct support to pediatric patients and their families. And Anthony Sanchez welcome. Anthony is corporate social responsibility manager at American Express. They’re three priorities around CSR or preserving historic places, developing new leaders and encouraging community service. Each of their fuller bios is outside. Please give a warm welcome Thio tunnel, please. Now, um important to know about about Christine and Anthony, they’re actually they could be holding hands. American Express that Americans press is funding project sunshine. So we brought we brought to the panel one team that is actively collaborating. All right, so keeping with you know what I I, uh I said is our purpose. Today, we’re gonna talk about relationship building, so I’m gonna I’m gonna start with The most basic basic question means we’ll start with Caitlin, creating strong relationships with funders again for our our audience of small and midsize non profits. How convey what’s one or two ideas that come to mind about creating that strong relationship at the outset at the beginning of a potential relationship?
[00:06:05.45] spk_3:
One unique thing about power is that we strive to and have the opportunity to fund an organization for up to 10 years. And I say that because when we enter a collaboration with new organization, there is not the idea that the organization is going to do everything perfectly, but there are a few characteristics that are really important to us. Um, the first I would say is just honest communication. I’ve had a number of grantees over. It’s inevitable that you will have adversity that something won’t go while ago won’t go as planned. And as a program officer in charge of managing our relationship, the most helpful thing to me in the kind of like star grantees versus ones that are a bit more difficult,
[00:06:33.49] spk_2:
we want to be star granted. Yes, we are just
[00:08:03.54] spk_3:
goes who communicate. Um, explain that. You know, there are delays in the project often most of the time for very legitimate reasons. And in addition to that, not only say, you know, unfortunately, Caitlyn, there’s been a delay or we weren’t able to do this activity but also have already problem solved around how to either overcome that challenge and or a different activity. So one grantee in Oaxaca, Mexico the end of their year long program, which was a leadership training for a group of 20 young people, was to take them to Mexico City. These are young people who had never really been out of the municipality in which they lived in right before. A few weeks before they were supposed to go to Mexico City, there was extreme violence in their community, and a lot of parents rescinded the permission for their young people or their their Children to go. So six of 18 that were planned to go were able to go to Mexico City. And that would be a big sort of like, uh, what’s going on. Um, but when they approached me, they said, Listen, only six of 18 could make it. We still went on the trip. They still did all the activities and we did a camping weekend closer to the community in which they live. They live where 16 of 18 were able to participate. We still went through the leadership training. We had hoped for the themes, the bonding that took place. Um, and they still had that sort of new and broadening horizons experience.
[00:08:25.48] spk_2:
And then we’re gonna have a chance to talk about some examples of impact. We’ll definitely get to that. So, yeah, basically, it sounds like you’re suggesting honesty. If there’s if there’s tribulations. If there’s trouble, let your funder. No. Yes, I have a non profit radio. I host this podcast. We gotta keep it to an hour. So we got a concise.
[00:08:56.14] spk_1:
It’s time for a break wegner-C.P.As so that your 9 90 gets filed on time so that your order is finished on time so that you get the advice of an experienced partner. Uhh doom and Affirm that has a nationwide non profit practice with thousands of non profit audits under its belt. Wegner-C.P.As dot com Now more of build your grantmakers relationships.
[00:09:03.21] spk_2:
Then what? Aside from being honest about potential problems, adversity, What else? Where else could we do again? Looking to try and look at the outset way? We don’t even have a relationship yet. It’s up to you. But early on, at least
[00:09:14.04] spk_4:
No, that’s great. And I wish echo
[00:10:58.04] spk_6:
exactly what was just said. I would also say, um, from the outset, you’re a new grand T and speaking from From Position the foundation, right work and some of the other foundations that we partner with speak raving. But a new grantee is ah is a new, amazing relationship that your program officers excited about and the foundation is excited about. Um, another dynamic within foundations is to not overbear helicopter in and try toe add too much burden onto the grantee because we know that your work is paramount and we don’t wanna sit there and constantly be asking you for updates, because we know that you’ll probably be sending that in a report. So I’d say Take the onus and agency, too. Um, reach out to us and share updates in the interim. We love when we get interim updates. If you’re, um and I’ll keep it quick with this story. We have a grand t out in the rural area of California, and the rural areas of California have more of, ah, um, kind of economic climate of the US South. It’s not all L a and, um, the Bay Area. We get updates about winds that they get at the local school board level and within the local court systems. And we love hearing those stories, and we share them throughout our foundation on and it goes all the way to the board level. So I would just say, Be open and honest with us and feel free to reach out. And don’t think there, that they’re the big foundation black box and we will send them a report later.
[00:11:36.38] spk_2:
Yeah, awesome. Open honesty and even reporting when it’s not required. Correct? Right. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Those okay? By the way, let me also remind each of you if you don’t have the mike. You can still speak. You’ll be hurt by this. This fancy omni directional. So you’re welcome. You should have it yet. But if you If you make some quick or something, you’ll be hurt. Okay? So keep it clean. It’s gonna be it’s gonna be heard. It’s gonna be preserved. Please let me burn. What? Advice for the starting that relationship real strong.
[00:13:27.24] spk_7:
So I’m gonna go to before you’re even a grantee. Andi, I agree with everything that I’ve heard so far. But before you’re a grantee, this is your opportunity to really understand who it is you’re gonna be meeting with. And you should be meeting with the foundation that you want to get to know or go to an event where you know that they’re going to be. And you should know enough about number one, their mission, the kind of grants that they do. Because when you talk about the work that you want to dio, it has to fit within the strategy of that foundation. But I’ll tell you, even more than that, you need to look at the language on that website. So you know, you’ve heard some hints here you’ve heard you know, words like workforce or words like social justice. Use those words in describing what you do. If your work relates to that area, convey what you d’oh and what your interests are within that kind of language and context that will make it easier for you and the person that you’re meeting with sometimes for the first time, to see where the fit ISS. Now maybe the person is going to get where the fit is without you having done your homework. But it’s your job to really make that fit apparent. So doing your homework in advance is really helpful. And one thing that I would suggest the first time that you meet with the foundation don’t hitch an idea because that one idea may be the thing that is not within what they can. D’oh. Let them get to know you and the range of things that you d’oh that will be the best entry. And one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they come in with a very specific pitch and their other things that we then didn’t get to talk about. And that’s the thing that would have been the right fit.
[00:14:11.20] spk_2:
Are you starting to hear the parallel between your individual giving and your potential institutional funding? Who goes into a meeting first, meeting with a potential donor and solicit? It doesn’t happen. You get You have to get to know them. Amy’s Amy’s advising. Not only do your research, but very well your first meeting not be the pitch and again parallel with your similar to the work you’re doing in the individual fundraising. It’s
[00:14:11.68] spk_7:
kind of like asking
[00:14:12.62] spk_3:
something you’d marry you
[00:14:23.94] spk_2:
wear. That really is talking. That’s what I’m doing wrong. I realized 55 years to hear that. All right, Christine, please.
[00:15:49.84] spk_5:
So I’m for our relationship with American Express and then other relationships. What we’ve learned is to is, and I think why we’ve been so successful is that as a non profit we take, we tried really hard to understand the funder. So and previously I actually was at a foundation, so I kind of have both lenses too. But it’s so it’s exciting to have the two perspectives, but I think it’s sometimes he deceived. Think of funders that oh, they have all this money and power, So I’m just going to go in and they must be able to do X, y and Z. I think there’s a lot of assumptions and and expectations that come with that relationship. But to think about the relationship from the point of view of how can I be helpful? What is tthe e funder going through? How can I How can we make their lives easier while also maximizing our impact? So it’s not just about I need this from younger. I want to get X. I get why. But okay. What? How can we create a conversation around? So for us at Project Sunshine, we focus on pediatric health care. So we always start with the child in mind. But we can’t do the work we’re doing without are amazing partners, our funders, our corporate partners. And so, while making sure that they understand our mission and the work we’re doing to ask them, okay, So that how can we make your life easier? So I think starting from that.
[00:16:34.20] spk_2:
And doesn’t that sound like something you would ask? Maybe not in those exact words, but parallel again in your individual fundraising. What is it about your work? What is it? I’m sorry What is it about our work that interest you that motivates you? That moves you? Um, and what’s in terms of suggestion? How can we make your life easier? Are there different methods of giving that we could talk about? Maybe a plan to give to makes more sense for you. Maybe it’s structured over a period of years. Maybe it’s a one time outright gift. Maybe it’s a gift of something other than cash gift in kind someone some other kind of asset. So you know, again the suggestion. How could we make your life easier? You’re always thinking about how you can help your donors to make gifts to, you know, see these parallels Anthony, please.
[00:17:35.63] spk_4:
So just to add what toe What Christine said, I think it’s important to set expectations, right? So on the corporate side, I mean most CSR teams in a corporation, it’s probably a group of 6 to 8 people at American Express. It’s a it’s a team of 10 and we’re basically responsible for engaging over 50,000 employees. So it’s hard to do that right. So we look for partners who can help us. We can help them with their objectives and to, you know, help with their mission. But on the other hand, we also expect them to engage our volunteers, right. So setting that expectation is important because it’s a win win situation. So we’re helping the non profit achieve their goals. But we’re also engaging our volunteers. So I think setting an expectation upfront, it’s super helpful,
[00:17:47.98] spk_2:
and your collaboration involves a lot of volunteer work, a lot of service work by American Express employees. We’re gonna get to that that grants aren’t only in the form of money by any means. Let’s open it up now we’re gonna come back, come to questions periodically through time together. How about questions on this initial round of
[00:18:10.23] spk_3:
Hi, Um, I was wondering how open funders are, too, like meeting new people like cold calls, your email or phone call like how approachable would you say you
[00:18:10.85] spk_2:
are? How open to new relationships. This is perfect. It’s exactly We’re talking about what you know, with the beginning phases of the relationship, how open are you to increase? Sounds like everybody has something. Say, uh, Amy, Good Michael. So pick them. I can’t.
[00:19:03.12] spk_7:
It’s it’s really important. That’s a big part of my job. Yeah, I’m constantly meeting people, you know, My area is around aging. It’s around care of older adults. So I am on the road as a national thunder. I’m on the road, probably almost every week. I am going and meeting with people. They have very easy access to May. If people are committing their life toward doing this work, I’m committing my life toward them because my foundation’s mission is to do this as well. So I’m completely accessible.
[00:20:26.94] spk_6:
Damn. Um, yeah, I would I would say that in our experience, we are one of the largest LGBT funders. So we get a lot of requests from us based for global Funders Well, from US based organizations and we Similarly, when we have a team of of six or so so we just don’t have the band with. And one of the one of the things I hate about my job is knowing that me and my team really don’t have the bandwidth, even though our way have open on initial funding concept submission so anyone can send them in. We all do look at them, but we don’t have the bandwidth to have that special touch and tell people. Oh, but this local foundation in Seattle area is doing X y Z, so I would say, Just keep at people. Find out where those funders in those spaces go. When we attend conferences and other things, you catch people in a different mindset. They’re not running the meetings. They’re not doing their grant right up. So I would say catching people in different spaces, as opposed to the cold call is one avenue you could you could employ. Okay?
[00:20:59.46] spk_3:
And I would just say as a both of do in a don’t is because in power, we are open to hearing from from perspective organizations. But do your homework ahead of time and make sure so empower supports work in 15 emerging market countries. We say that on our website, we list the country’s make sure it’s a country that you work in is one that we support. We support work with at risk youth ages 10 to 24. If you’re working with the elderly or with Children, we’re not the right organization. So in general, Aziz was saying, we tried to respect our grantees time, and hopefully the idea would be that then sitting organizations or are granted partners will also do their part, too. Respect our time
[00:21:20.74] spk_2:
if I tell you that initial
[00:21:52.69] spk_4:
really agree with that? Obviously, like I mentioned before, it’s very hard to, you know, answer every email, answer every inquiry. So doing research. I think our website is really good at providing. As tony mentioned, we support three different pillars, but it it’s a good place to start because it provides a list off sample projects that we’ve supported. There’s also an eligibility quiz. So going back to what hates that, um, it helps you figure out whether it would be a good match or not, because through that eligibility quiz, you know, if you were to select, you know you’re in a place like Arkansas where we don’t have a large employer employee base. That probably wouldn’t be a match because we like to support organizations and specific regions, especially, you know, where we have a large employees head cow and and, you know, our biggest market. So doing research is it’s super important.
[00:23:26.56] spk_2:
Yeah, So you’ve heard this a couple of times now. So what do we do on the individual side called prospect Research? You got to do it on the institutional side to you don’t want to embarrass yourself by, uh, it’s a failing to send a letter of inquiry. If that’s part of the That’s the first step that a funder once so don’t miss step by not doing your research. Let’s move the relationship on a little bit now. We’re not We’re not at the inquiry stage. We’re not at the opening stage now. We’re funding your, uh you’ve selected grantee. How can we keep the relationship strong now? We already heard Report when it’s not necessary to keep us involved. Some steel. You can’t repeat your idea. You gotta come with multiple ideas. That’s why you’re here. Way also hurt. Share adversity, tribulations, difficulties along the way. What other advice? Again? Keeping the relationship strong. Now that we are funded, who wants toe? Anybody could start. Okay,
[00:24:25.24] spk_3:
11 thing that could be a challenge. But I think is also easy to find. A potential volunteer for that really makes a difference. For us is around honestly high quality pictures of the work that you’re doing if you have a really active social media page and the reason is that we are not in and down foundation. So we report our donors about the work that we’re supporting, and it’s really helpful. And unfortunately, some of the grand teeth like it featured the most are those that have really great documentation of their own work. So not every organization can hire it’s owned photographer, that’s for sure, but I think that’s a good news. That may be a volunteer who wants to come learn more about your program. If they have, you know, photography skills could be a really great way. Just just yeah, raise awareness about the work that you’re doing. And, yeah,
[00:25:14.34] spk_2:
can I suggest that maybe it doesn’t always. It doesn’t have to be high production value to be moving and show impact. I’ve seen cases where, uh, people who are benefiting from the organization’s work do you sell do selfie videos and, you know, with some really simple editing tools that could be really compelling so they might go on for 12 minutes or so. That’s too long, but I guess the point is it doesn’t have to be high production value necessarily to convey impact, use your social media. Obviously, we all know how important video is how compelling that could be. Storytelling through pictures as well. Uh, you know, let them let them know what the work is that they’re paying for. Please, Dad.
[00:25:50.29] spk_6:
No, no, Andi, keep it quick. Might sound very simple, but I know when I was in very early in my career non profit that didn’t have much of a development office capacity. But now I know being on the other end how important. Make sure your funders are on your email list. So when you send out everything about programmatic aspects or big announcements that, you know, all of your funders are getting those updates. That way you could focus on your work. And that way, funders are also updated.
[00:26:21.95] spk_2:
Follow them on Twitter. Follow your funders on Twitter. I mean, it sounds basic, but it might get overlooked. Facebook, you know, fan their facebook page, etcetera, etcetera connect in ways other than what? Uh, what? They’re what they’re requirements are for, you know, quarterly or semi annual reporting or something, you know, connect beyond that again. Relationship building. Right. You’re doing it on the individual side. Do it on the institutional side as well. You got something in my wife’s name is Amy. So you suffer. I don’t feel like I’m sorry. I
[00:27:09.51] spk_7:
Okay, so the other thing is about your expectation for us. And you know, it’s important that you have an expectation for us. There are people. There are foundations that, you know, everything kind of goes into a black box. When, when I’m developing a proposal, I actually work with the grantee on the development of that proposal. So I’ll edit it. It’s not a black box, it’s an intentional act. So once we’ve decided we’re going forward, it is a very intentional act. But once you have the grant, the other thing is to consider me as a part of the team. So include us in convening Sze, invite us. We may or may not be able to go, but we also have the ability to write and speak. I’ve given congressional testimony on behalf of grantees. You know, we are We can provide you with more than just grants support. We can actually provide you with elbow grease. We can be helpful to you. We can even bring other funders to the table. So the more you engage with us as a grantee, the more helpful I can be for you.
[00:27:37.28] spk_2:
Excellent examples. Excellent. Thank you, kid. You wanna you wanna add?
[00:28:10.43] spk_5:
So I know we’ve been talking about social media and videos and high tech stuff. So what I think, though, that that’s very helpful, I think. And I don’t know, old fashioned is just a meet in person. So for Anthony and I had breakfast today before we came here and we try to make it a point to remember that for organizations, companies that there’s a person there that you’re talking thio cool. Maybe just got married or so to to also build a relationship around the person, not just the institution. It’s a thing.
[00:28:46.14] spk_2:
Yeah, said earlier. Institutions are made up of people. I mean, how how plainer can we make the comparisons t your individual fundraising program? It’s the same. It’s the same strategy keeping, keeping, informed, inviting. You invite your major donors to things invite your institutional. Your funders, like Annie said they may or may not come, but the invitations should always be out there. They should be getting all your press. All your tweets, et cetera. You know I can’t drive home way
[00:30:43.69] spk_1:
need to take a break. Cougar Mountain software. Their accounting product Denali, is built for non profits from the ground up so that you get an application that supports the way you work that has the features you need and the exemplary support that understands you. They have a free 60 day trial. It’s on the listener landing page at now. Time for tony Steak, too. The 20 NTC. The non profit technology conference was terrific. I hope I’m pre recording this a month before NTC. Thanks so much to Cougar Mountain for sponsoring non profit radio at the conference. I do hope that the booth we shared did not get torn down because you forgot to pay the bill. I doubt that that happened. Um, I’m sure I reminded you that the payment was due, and I’m sure you hadn’t paid it. At least I hope, Assuming that you did, I I do. Thank you so much. So let’s assume that you did so thank you to Cougar Mountain and the guests, all the many guests that I will have captured, uh, last year it was 70 knows more than seventies like 80 85 in 36 different panels or something so comparable numbers. Thank you. Thank you to the guests who took time at 20 ntc to come by and be interviewed for non profit radio. And of course, you listening. We’ll get the benefit of that for months to come. I’m gonna have 20 NTC panels. Thio play. Thanks so much to the intense staff. They’re always accommodating. And this year, I’m sure well, have been It was that the police Kwame Perfecto will of a future perfect will have been perfect. We’ll have been very, very accommodating as they always are. So thank you to any sample, Ward CEO and all the staff at n 10 that is. Tony. Take ju. Now let’s go back to build your grantmakers relationships.
[00:31:46.89] spk_4:
So on the corporate side, it’s about being, you know, you guys being flexible, right? Because, yeah, I can support you through grantmaking and providing volunteers. But there’s also other opportunities, so I always make it. Um, I always make the effort of engaging non profits where our affinity groups at American Express, because that if your woman empowerment organization, um, there’s always a way to connect with employees and other ways, right? So will offer volunteers, but We can also bring awareness to our employees. And they could make individual donations through our employees giving campaign or through our dollars for doors program. Or maybe it’s an opportunity for you to come in and speak to a group of women and just bring more awareness. So the relationship doesn’t just have toe. And at grantmaking were always big, expanding that relationship and helping you as much as we can.
[00:32:11.25] spk_2:
All right, this is a time we’re gonna turn thio storytelling I want I want to turn to some examples of how these strong relationships have impacted work on the ground. You used any example? You like one of your one of your grand T organizations? Let’s start with Anthony and Project Sunshine and And why don’t you talk about the work that goes beyond as you were just saying, Perfect intro Don’t be on money.
[00:34:07.81] spk_4:
So, um, we started our partnership with projects ensuring back in 2010 and our biggest challenge at that moment was engaging those. I mean, we’re American Express. We have several call centers throughout the U. S. And it’s harder to engage those employees who are, you know, their job is basically being on the phone, being in a call center. So we were looking for ways to engage these volunteers because, let’s be honest. Most employees want to go out and volunteer, but the challenge is finding the time, right. So not every employee has the luxury of going on park and planting a tree for four or five hours. So we thought, Why not start this partnership with ah, Project Sunshine? Who? Christine can talk more about what they dio create these care kids that are prepared in house. Esso employees don’t necessarily have to leave the office to volunteer. Um, it only takes one hour. We started our partnership back in 2010. Immediately. We got a huge response because again people felt like they were able to give back without having to invest so much time. Um, fast forward. I think two or three years later, the success of the program helped us build a case to go back to our leaders and say, Hey, this is a great partnership. Were engaging more volunteers. We expanded then to other locations. Um, and we’ve been partners now for seven years, and we’ve engaged over 7000 employees in the last couple of years, and we’re now internationally. Last year we started a partnership with Project Sunshine. So it’s finding ways of thinking of all your employees population, right? So those who don’t have the flexibility and I think that’s what works well that projects on China heard the challenge that we were having. And they did a great job at finding a solution for us,
[00:35:04.40] spk_2:
especially if you’re talking to corporations. Think broadly again, of course, because we said your first meeting is not gonna be the solicitation. You’re gonna make some enquiries. So after you’ve done your research on the Web site, maybe talk to some other organizations that you know they’re funding. However, however you go about your research, especially talking to corporations, you want to think about volunteerism because Anthony’s point is, and please do want a volunteer, and that often is a part of what companies want to give. So it’s more than the money, especially not only limited to companies, certainly, but especially companies don’t think just about, you know, dollars. Okay, so So how are your work? Is pediatric patients supporting them and their families? And how are these sick kids and their families benefiting from
[00:37:57.10] spk_5:
that great question. So we the healthcare landscape is constantly changing, and oftentimes the child, the patient, they’re stressed and terrified parents. They’re siblings kind of get missed. And so what we do is mobilize volunteers to really provide and come around the child that the parents, the family and to treat them the way that if we were the child, the parents or the sibling, we will wanna be treated. And so we do a number of different programs we provide in hospital based parties, bringing the joy of childhood into the into the hospital setting, letting kids be kids what we do. That’s one part, the part that we work with American Express and a lot of our corporate volunteers with its Are Sending sunshine program. So the Sending Sunshine program really what’s designed kind of with, I mean American Express was a big part of that. It’s office based volunteering, so volunteer corporate volunteers in their own offices get to Assam. Assemble these craft kids, so that’s a standalone craft that we sent to over 300 hospitals and medical facilities so that if you mean you can imagine if you’re a child and you just broken leg, You’re in emergency room. You’re gonna be there for four hours and you have a lot of stressed out doctors, child life specialists. They able to grab these and give give them to a child to decrease their anxiety, to decrease their even boredom to the end. To the the sibling who may be with them and and the care giver is a moment to breathe. So that’s one of the the activities. We also create these things called Sergi Dolls, which are medical play dolls. And we’ve make there’s research behind them about using these dolls to help empower Children to understand the treatment that they will be going through. And when I first joined projects on China’s sick does, this is really make a difference. And the overwhelming answer from our partners is yes, we have a wait list then. So clearly there’s a need there and the and that the need for on the hospital side for these Children, families that it’ll line so well with our corporate partners. I think it’s it’s kind of it’s amazing this win win that Anthony was talking about so over, I think with the last time we checked over 45,000 Children. Families received these craft kids or Sergio dolls that American Express employees put together, and one recently was around the hurricanes. So the we had sent American Express has a South Florida region regional area and Soviet made a bunch of craft kits sent them to a hospital suspected by the hurricane. We received this amazing quote phone call for my child life specialists who said You saved our lives. So basically, American Express volunteers saved our lives because we received, I think, something like 100 and influence of 150 Children, families who were clearly distraught and stressed. And the first thing they did was grab as many of these yellow projects on Shane bags that our volunteers put together as they could and went from chaos to calm. These were her words. Chaos to come immediately.
[00:38:24.14] spk_2:
Christine, how do you convey that message to American Express that they would feel the impact of their work?
[00:38:37.72] spk_5:
So we did have a phone call with Anthony, and we do try to. So we have a great development team that does a lot of social media and we’re trying to try to provide photos, reporting all the things that we had talked about on this panel so that we could make sure that our corporate incorporate partners feel that yes. So we did for that specific one. We were on the phone
[00:38:53.30] spk_2:
and then Anthony, you fed it back to the actual employees. Actually,
[00:39:45.87] spk_4:
it’s such a satisfaction, right on our employees and those who volunteer because you see the immediate impact, right? So it’s not like going on like a community center and painting a wall blew right. There’s really not much impact that you see there. Yeah, you paint the wall. But with these care kids, you know, if 100 volunteers create 1000 kids, you know that they’re going to get to 1000 kids who need them. So every time I post the Projects on Shine Project on our Internet site, it sells out in a matter of like five minutes like out get flooded with e mails because again, it’s a good way for employees. Thio just donate a now our of their time and see the immediate impact that these attacks
[00:39:53.44] spk_2:
I could tell Caitlin is burning toe and something will come back.
[00:40:51.11] spk_3:
I just wanted Thio say this is an example of where that sounds like a phenomenal volunteer opportunity, where it’s both beneficial, and it’s a meaningful volunteer opportunity that’s beneficial not just for the volunteer but also for the organization. I just want to say this is one of those moments or feel free to push back against your donor, where if they’re really excited and want to send volunteers your way, and it’s actually going to create more of a headache than be helpful or if you work in a context where it’s not appropriate. Tohave Caitlyn as, ah White, 32 year hold American Coming in, I’m thinking internationally, but with at risk youth are more sensitive populations. Feel free to say no because all too often I think organizations, especially if it’s a donor asking feel required to take on those volunteers. And sometimes it’s it’s more trouble than it’s worth there,
[00:42:41.06] spk_6:
Um, a shining of ah story that wouldn’t repeat that some of the themes that we’ve already heard and I, um, I’m reminded of a grand T partner of ours, that it was actually same grantee that I mentioned working in the rural areas of California. Uh, They’ve been a grantee of ours for 33 years. So not, you know, like a historic one for us, but not a baby. And we have had an amazing relationship. They send us that the updates we’ve met curated this relationship. We took a tour of the Central Valley of California. Seeing all the work they’ve done. We bought our CEO of our vice president. We met Dolores Huerta, and we really got to see their work after that site visit. You can tell that the relationship kind of tipped a little bit. Uh, you could tell that we had a shorthand. We had a common connection and fast forward to two weeks ago. The head of the project is doing great work and they’re trying to scale their program. We shopped this pro, this program director to the Ford Foundation to the Open Society Foundation and to an anonymous donor that works in this space. We introduced them thio like mine and thunders that we know here in New York City because we know that their work is so amazing. You know, in the rural areas of California, kind of far away from big foundation institutions, except for the California Endowment. So that’s that’s a story that I that I love, that I don’t think that maybe a lot of grantees would think to say, Please introduce us to your other funders. You might think that is a no overreach or going past, but I think you can get a read on that relationship once it reaches that tipping
[00:42:55.05] spk_2:
point. That’s something I’m sure a lot of organizations you wouldn’t even think to do. Introduce us to your other funders.
[00:43:32.35] spk_1:
It’s time for our last break turn to communications their former journalists so that you get help building relationships with journalists so that your call gets answered. They pick up the phone for you when there’s news that you need to comment on because they got the relationship with you so that you stay relevant in your work. Including they are former journalists at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. They understand the community. There are turn hyphen to DOT CEO. We’ve got butt loads more time for build your grantmakers relationships.
[00:43:37.53] spk_2:
You got a back story.
[00:46:35.53] spk_7:
I do have an impact story. So, um, in the foundation world, the most popular areas to fund our the arts, education and Children, and my foundation does not fund that. In fact, out of 105 1000 foundations in this country, only six air primarily focused on older adults. So very, very small group of funders that do work nationally in this space. And we really care about creating a JJ friendly health systems. You know, how are they gonna be responsive to older adults caring about serious illness and end of life and also about family caregivers? So one of the grants is here in New York City. It’s the center toe to advance palliative care. It trains people to provide care and make sure that they haven’t the obscure planning so that their, you know, their goals are what the care is that they get at the end that they relieve suffering. They make sure that people have the care that they need when they go through very serious illness, even when they’re gonna get better from serious illness to help them get through that serious illness. And so the kinds of impact this work has had, um, today palliative care is in roughly 90% of hospitals nationally. That’s huge. It only came to this country in the 19 eighties. We have been a long and sustained funder in this space, and we may be slowed a warm, but we tend to be a longer and sustained thunder around impact. Theo. Other thing was there were very few funders that were interested in this space. Does anybody remember the death panel conversations? Okay, well, thankfully, we’re not having a lot of those today. But there were very few funders that we’re doing focused work in this area. So I decided I was going to start having calls. This was not with the grantee. This was on behalf of the grantee. I wanted to create a safe learning space for foundations that might be thinking about this. They wanted to learn. And so what’s happened with that? We now have a very large collaborative. People are more strategic. They know people that they want to fund. We fund together some things we fund next to each other and other things. Things past year, about $80 million in new funding was in this space. And this is on behalf of the grantee, the grant. He could not have had those calls, but it was necessary to begin Thio bring people into the space. And now they’re coming out of the woodwork. We actually did a grant to give somebody money to help coordinate this group. You know, coordinate the calls and everything else. So Thean pact is huge. The thing only other thing about this was about seven years ago. I was diagnosed with stage four cancer, and I had been doing this work long before. My, you know, this is my my area. But then I made a decision. How could I make use of the situation to further healthy grantee? So I’ve been writing speaking. We’ve put on congressional briefings together. Eso any other way that I could be helpful. I am definitely shoulder to shoulder with the grantee.
[00:47:00.14] spk_2:
Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. Back story. And then we’re gonna come back to the come back to you. It’ll be peppermint lifesavers. Time very shortly after Caitlin’s Kitten’s got an example.
[00:49:33.10] spk_3:
Yes, and I would just go back to some power can fund your question around. Um, like what to do once you’re already a grantee and kind of in the medium term and how it can be really helpful for the relationship. So just to say one of the key criteria we look for when determining whether or not we’re going to fund an organization for a 2nd 1/3 a fourth year. Is this idea around? Are they a learning organization? And by that we mean a couple of things on one. Um, really, The most important is like I said, we don’t expect programs to go perfectly. There’s challenges that come up. Youth are dynamic and changing issue areas arise but really impactful. Grantees that we have in great relationships and the really impactful programming are constantly learning and adapting and analyzing what went well, what it’s our strange what’s an area for improvement and even again, the same grand T in Oaxaca, Mexico. So in the course of their programming found that the middle school population that they were working with were engaging in self harm and cutting, and they recognized we as an organization don’t have expertise on this. But they themselves reached out, identified an organization in Canada that focuses on this and then came to us and said, Listen and our next grant, we would love to include a line item to have training on this to better serve our young people, Um, and with a learning organization, I would just say also openness to feedback. We think, you know, we support programs across the globe and sometimes see similar challenges in best practices. So it’s not a donor driven by any means. But being open to feedback is really important, even if you don’t necessarily take it on. And then also, with this learning organization comes which some silly but playing well with others. So we often ask grantee organizations what other organizations are doing great work in their field. And it’s a red flag for us if they if they come back and say no one else is doing it as well as we are, which has happened. And, uh, yeah, so I would say, being a learning organization playing while collaborating with other service providers. It’s something that we look for, provides
[00:50:07.53] spk_2:
Question occurs to me based on what you and Amy and we’re saying, especially if you’re being funded. What about? So if none of your funders ask, can we meet your other funders? If you’re If you’re a grantee? What about staying? We’d like you to meet our other funders. What about the grantee putting that those that possibility together. Is there a downside we’re talking about? Could there be okay? So So the grantee could think of it. If none of the funders do, there’s no Doesn’t seem to be a downside to that. And just just a couple of sentences. Don’t do this. Stop your top. Don’t do this.
[00:50:27.51] spk_7:
Yeah. The worst thing that you could do is when you have an opportunity to get funding to listen to the thunder about what it is you should be funding. In other words, don’t move from your mission. If it’s not helpful to your mission and strategy, it’s a disaster.
[00:50:52.71] spk_5:
Okay, I’m gonna just I’ll answer this from my previous foundation experience. One thing was don’t get angry when you get like when you get defunded. So there was one of the things that was very difficult was when I was for a funder is to not fund again. That’s very hard, I think from I’m sure everyone here knows and to have to send out a declination is also hard to have that he met with anger and accusation. Not great.
[00:51:24.79] spk_4:
I would say. Don’t go into your automatic pitch right? Because we have objectives. You have objectives. So it goes just back to what we’ve been saying doing research and not just assuming all American Express is a company with so much money that we would necessarily support. I’m sure your mission is important, but it might be something that we’re not. Um it’s not within our government that we would support. So not just going into your pitch and assuming
[00:52:03.76] spk_6:
that. Okay, Miss Deadlines, this deadlock don’t miss deadlines. You can ask for an extension. Don’t do it. 11. 59 the day of, um, but my in my over four years in the land to be I know exactly those organizations that I think you’re gonna fall through the cracks unless our team reminds them. And I feel like that’s a perception issue happens with individuals. You won’t know that one person that made a bad impression in your family or at work and that perception than permeates it and then stays. So just have a schedule. Have reminders, have your assistance, remind you whatever but yeah, don’t.
[00:52:30.84] spk_2:
Please. There’s so many technical tools that can help you do everything from wake up to know when to go to sleep Everything in between. So use the use, the app to use tools. We have,
[00:53:01.58] spk_3:
um, to one I would say is don’t fall off the place. The face of the earth. So we’ve had some grantees just disappear. Yeah, and and not communicating, I would say, Even if it’s a one line, you know, again in Mexico, right after the earthquake, we reached out to guarantees. How are you doing? You know, we’re in the trenches, but thank you for thinking of us. Boom. Or, you know, where is your report? I’m sorry. There’s been delays. Just keep the communication open.
[00:53:12.25] spk_2:
So please, let’s join me in thanking
[00:53:31.56] spk_0:
way. Christine Damn Warner. And I hope you see
[00:53:37.69] spk_2:
all the connections between your individual fundraising and your newly invigorated institutional fund raising program
[00:54:36.35] spk_1:
next week. Now that you’ve got great grantmakers relationships, it’s terrible. Charge your grants. Fundraising with John Hicks. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com by cooking meth and software Denali Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits? Tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turn, to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. Ah, creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Liebowitz is the lying producer. Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is that Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Believe me next week for non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great
I’ve got three videos of a smart panel I moderated for the Foundation Center in New York City last November. They’re all about building and growing relationships with institutional funders. You’ll see many parallels between this work and your individual major giving program.
Amy Berman, Caitlin Mitchell, Daniel Werner, Anthony Sanchez & Christine Kang:Build Your Grantmaker Relationships
Our panel of grantmakers and a grantee reveals savvy strategies for building and maintaining relationships with your institutional funders. Foundations are made of people. How do you get close to them? This is a panel I moderated at The Foundation Center in New York City.
Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.
Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.
Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on the aptly named host oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d turn probono genic if you got under my skin with the idea that you missed today’s show, build your grantmaker relationships, our panel of grantmaker tze and a grantee reveal strategies for building and maintaining relationships with your institutional funders. Foundations are made of people. How do you get close to them? This’s a panel i moderated at the foundation center in new york city. Tony take two show you love, we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuing radio and by weinger cpas guiding you beyond the numbers. Wagner, cps dot com tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream tony dahna may slash tony tell us, here’s the beginning of build your grantmaker relationships, we’re here to talk about collaboration and impact, collaborate and impact, and our panel today is going to focus in the collaboration we’re gonna be talking about the relationship, building of collaboration, that aspect of collaboration between non-profits and the funders. All right, most of you are in non-profits potential grantees, and most of our panel are the funders. So i have maybe admonished, is too strong a word, but i have urged them to keep their advice, you know, relevant for potential grantees. How can each of you, in your non-profits collaborate, build relationships with potential funders, and even even when even when you get a no from a funder? What can you do after that? Our concern is that. This is scene is proceeding to transactional. It shouldn’t be transactional, your relationship with potential grant oars. Potential funders can be parallel to the work that you do in individual fund-raising in each of your individual programs, because funders, air made up institutions are made up of people, and we know people fund. So how can you build the relationship, keep the relationship strong, even in the face of a rejection, and thereby collaborate with your potential funders, which hopefully will become your funders? It’s. My real pleasure to introduce our winning panel of beginning with your on your left is caitlin mitchell. Caitlyn is a program and evaluation officer with empower the emerging markets foundation. Their work is around at risk youth in emerging markets in colombia, mexico and south africa. Next. Moving to your right. Dan werner. Stan is social justice program associate with the darkest foundation. Their priority is lgbt social justice, and we have amy berman she’s, senior program officer at the john john, a hartford foundation. And their work is around improving, improving the health of older adults. Christine can associate program manager at project sunshine. She he is our soul panelists who is among you apart, part of the non-profit five oh, one c three community, and their work at project sunshine is direct support to pediatric patients and their families, and anthony sanchez welcome. Anthony is corporate social responsibility manager at american express. They’re three priorities around csr, or preserving historic places, developing new leaders and encouraging community service. Each of their fuller bios is outside. Please, sze, give a warm welcome teo title, please. Now important to know about about christine and anthony, they’re actually they could be holding hands hyre american express that americans press is funding projects sunshine so we brought we brought to the panel one team that is actively collaborating, right? So keeping with you know what? I i, uh, i said is our purpose today we’re going to talk about relationship building, so i’m going, i’m going start with the most basic basic question means we’ll start with caitlin, um, creating strong relationships with funders again, for our, for our audience of small and midsize non-profits how could they what’s one or two ideas that come to mind about creating that strong relationship at the outset at the beginning of a potential relationship? One unique thing about power is that we strive to and have the opportunity to fund an organization for up to ten years, and i say that because when we enter a collaboration with new organization, um, there is not the idea that the organization is going to do everything perfectly, but there are a few characteristics that are really important to us. The first i would say is just honest communication, i’ve had a number of grantees over it’s inevitable that you will have adversity, that something won’t go well go won’t go as planned, and as a program officer in charge of managing our relationship, the most helpful thing to me and the kind of like star grantees versus ones that are a bit more difficult, we want to be star granted, yes are just goes who communicate, explain that, you know, there are delays in the project, often most of the time, for a very legitimate reasons. And in addition to that not only say, you know, unfortunately, caitlyn there’s been a delay, or we weren’t able to do this activity, but also have already problem solved around how to either overcome that challenge and or a different activity. So one grantee in oaxaca, mexico, thie end of their year long program, which was a leadership training for a group of twenty young people, was to take them to mexico city. These are young people who had never really been out of the way municipality in which they lived in right before, a few weeks before they were supposed to go to mexico city, there was extreme violence in their community and a lot of parents rescinded the permission for their young people or their their children to go, so six of eighteen that were planned to go. We’re able to go to mexico city, and that would be a big sort of, like what’s going on. Um, but when they approached me, they said, listen, only six of eighteen could make it. We still went on the trip, they still did all the activities, and we did a camping weekend closer to the community in which they live. They live where sixteen of eighteen were able to participate. We still went through the leadership training. We had hoped for the themes, the bonding that took place, and they still had that sort of new and broadening horizons experience. And then we’re gonna have a chance to talk about some examples, okay? Of impact. We’ll definitely get to that. Cool. So yeah, basically, it sounds like you’re suggesting honesty. If there’s if there’s tribulations if there’s trouble, let your funder no. Yes, much work inside, i think. A non-profit radio i host this podcast. We gotta keep it to an hour. So we got a concise pursuing the field guide for data driven. Fund-raising it’s, the latest resource on the listener landing page tony dahna slash pursuing radio there’s so much data available it’s overload just just the data that you already have these can be overwhelming makes me think of ah howard on network i’m mad as hell, and i’m not going to take it anymore. So much data. The field guide makes your data less daunting talk talk, howard down. This is what’s in it. Five high level steps so you can translate your business objectives into actionable steps. Ah, real world case studies showing you how other non-profits are using data to achieve their fund-raising goals and a worksheet for ah, conversation and thought creation to help your team find the right focus. It’s the field guide for data driven fund-raising tory dahna em a slash pursuant radio. Now back to build your grantmaker relationships. Then what? Aside from no being honest about potential problems, adversity? What else? What else can we do again? Looking to try to look at the outset. Wait! We don’t even have a relationship yet. It’s up to you. But early on at least no that’s. Great. And i was echo exactly what was just said i would also say from the outset you’re a new grantee and speaking from from position the foundation right work and some of the other foundations that we partner with, uh, i want this speaker anything but a new grantee is ah, in a new amazing relationship that your program officers excited about, and the foundation is excited about. Another dynamic within foundations is to not, um, overbear helicopter in and try toe add too much burden onto the grantee because we know that your work is paramount and we don’t wantto sit there and constantly be asking for you for updates because we know that you’ll probably be sending that in a report, so i’d say take the onus and agency to reach out to us and share updates in the interim we love when we get interim updates if you’re and i’ll keep it quick with this story, we have a grand t out in the rural area of california and the rural areas of california have more of ah sabat kind of economic climate of the us south it’s not all l a and the bay area we get updates about winds that they get at the local school board level and within the local court systems, and we love hearing those stories and we share them throughout our foundation on it goes all the way to the board level, so i would just say, be open and honest with us on dh feel free to reach out don’t think there that they’re the big foundation black box, and we will send a move. Port leader? Yeah, awesome open honesty and even reporting when it’s not required. Correct, right? You’re welcome. You’re welcome those okay, geever, by the way, let me also just remind each of you. If you don’t have the mic, you can still speak. You’ll be hurt by this. This fancy omni directional. So no, you’re welcome. You should have it. Yeah, but if you if you, uh, you know, make some quick or something, you’ll be hurt. Okay? So keep it clean because it’s gonna be it’s gonna be heard. It’s gonna be preserved, please. Amy berman. What? I advice for them. Oh, that starting that relationship real strong. So i’m going to go go to before you’re even a grantee. Andi, i agree with everything that i’ve heard so far, but before you’re a grantee, this is your opportunity to really understand who it is you’re going to be meeting with and you should be meeting with with the foundation that you want, teo get to know or go to an event where you know that they’re going to be and you should know enough about number one, their mission kind of grants that they do, because when you talk about the work that you want todo, it has to fit within the strategy of that foundation. But i’ll tell you even more than that, you need to look at the language on that website. So you know you’ve heard some hints here you’ve heard, you know, words like workforce or words like social justice, use those words in describing what you do if you were work, relates to that area, convey what you dio and what your interests are within that kind of language and context that will make it easier for you and the person that you’re meeting with, sometimes for the first time to see where the fit iss now, maybe the person is going to get where the fit is without you having done your homework, but it’s your job to really make that fit a parent so doing your homework in advance is really helpful. And one thing that i would suggest the first time that you meet with the foundation don’t hit an idea because that one idea may be the thing that is not within what they khun d’oh, let them get to know you and the range of things that you d’oh that will be the best entry. And one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they come in with a very specific pitch and there are other things that we then didn’t get to talk about and that’s the thing that would have been the right fit. Are you starting to hear the parallel between your individual giving and your potential institutional funding? Who goes into a meeting first meeting with a potential donor and solicit it doesn’t happen you get you have to get to know them. Amy’s, amy’s advising not only do your research, but very well your first meeting ought not be the pitch and again parallel with your similar to the work you’re doing in the individual fund-raising it’s kind of like asking something you’d marry. You on the way here, it’s, not really a smoker talking that’s where i’m going wrong. I realize that now fifty five years to hear that christine, please. So i’m for our relationship with american express and then other relationships. What we’ve learned is to is and i think why we’ve been so successful, is that as a non-profit we take, we tried really hard to understand the funder. So and previously i actually was at a foundation, so i kind of have both lenses too, but it’s so it’s exciting to have the two perspectives. But i think it’s sometimes you just need to think of funders as though they have all of this money and power, some just going to go in and they must be able to do x y and z i think there’s a lot of assumptions and and expectations that come with that relationship. But you think about the relationship from the point of view of how can i be helpful? What is thie funder going through? How can i? How can we make their lives easier while also maximizing our impact? So it’s not just about i need this from younger i want to get x get why, but okay, work. How can we create a conversation around? So for us at project sunshine, we focus on pediatric health care, so we always start with the child in mind. But we can’t do the work we’re doing without our amazing partners are funders, our corporate partners. And so while making sure that they understand our mission and the work we’re doing to ask them, okay, so that how can we make your life easier? So i think starting from that and doesn’t that sound like something you would ask? Maybe not in those exact words, but parallel again in your individual fund-raising what? What is it about your work? What is it? I’m sorry. What is it about our work that interest you that motivates you? That moves you back-up and what’s. You know, in terms of suggestion, how can we make your life easier? Are there different methods of giving that we could talk about? Maybe a plan to give to makes more sense for you? Maybe it’s structured over a period of years. It’s a one time outright gift. Maybe it’s a gift of something other than cash. Gift in-kind someone some other kind of asset. So, you know, again the suggestion, how can we make your life easier? You’re always thinking about how you can help your donors to make gifts to you. You see these parallels? Upleaf so just to add what toe what christine said, i think it’s important to set expectations, right? So on the corporate side, i mean, most csr teams in a corporation is probably a group of six to eight people at american express it’s a it’s, a team of ten, and we’re basically responsible for engaging over fifty thousand employees so it’s hard to do that, right? So we look for partners who can help us, we can help them with their objectives and to, you know, help with their mission. But on the other hand, we also expect them to engage our volunteers, right? So setting that expectation is important because it’s a win win situation, so we’re helping the non-profit achieve their goals, but we’re also engaging our volunteers, i think setting an expectation up front, it’s super helpful and your collaboration involves a lot of volunteer work out of service work by american express employees. We’re gonna get to that. That grants aren’t only in the form of money, by any means. Let’s. Open it up. Now we’re gonna come back, come to questions periodically through throughout time together. How about questions on this initial round of hi? Um, i was wondering how open funders are, too, like meeting new people, like cold calls, you know, email or phone call, like, how approachable would you say you are, how open to new relationships? This is perfect, it’s. Exactly. We’re talking about what you know we’re the beginning phases of the relationship, how open or you to increase. Sounds like everybody has something, say, uh, good, michael. So on. It’s it’s. Really important that’s a big part of my job. I’m constantly meeting people you know, my area is around aging it’s around care of older adults, so i am on the road as a national thunder. I’m on the road, probably almost every week. I am going and meeting with people. They have very easy access to may. Um, if people are committing their life for doing this work, i’m committing my life toward them, because my foundation’s mission is to do this a swell, so i’m completely accessible. Damn! Yeah, i would. I would say that in our experience, we are one of the largest lgbt thunders, so we get a lot of requests from us based global funders well from us based organizations, and we similarly only have a team of of six or so, so we just don’t have the band with and one of the one of the things i hate about my job is knowing that me, me and my team really don’t have the band with even though are you? We have open initial funding, concept submission so anyone can send them in. We all do look at them, but we don’t have the bandwidth to have that special touch and tell people. Oh, but this local foundation in seattle area is doing x y z, so? So i would say, just keep at people, find out where those funders in those spaces go, when we attend conferences and other things, you catch people in a different mindset, they’re not running the meetings, they’re not doing their grantwriting up, so i would say catching people in different spaces as opposed to the cold call is one avenue you could you could employ kayman and i would just say it’s a both a do innit don’t is because in power we are open to hearing from from perspective organizations, but do your homework ahead of time and make sure so empower supports work in fifteen emerging market countries. We say that on our website we list the country’s make sure it’s a country that you work in is one that we support uh, we support work with at risk youth ages ten to twenty four if you’re working with the elderly or with children were not the right organization. So in general, as dan was saying, we tried to respect our grand thi’s time, and hopefully the idea would be that then sitting organizations or are granted partners will also do their part too respect our time and something about you that initial really agree with that. Obviously, like i mentioned before, it’s very hard, teo, you know, answer every email, answer every inquiry, so doing research, i think our website is really good at providing as tony mentioned, we support three different pillars, but it it it’s a good place to start because it provides a list ofthe sample projects that we’ve supported there’s. Also an eligibility quiz. So going back to what hates that it it helps you figure out whether it would be a good match or not, because through that eligibility quiz, you know, if you were to select, you know, you’re in a place like arkansas, where we don’t have a large and employee base, that probably wouldn’t be a match because we like to support organizations in specific regions, especially you know, where we have a large employee headcount and and, you know, our biggest market, so doing research is super important. Yeah, so you’ve heard this a couple times now. So what do we do on the individual side? Oppcoll prospect research? You got to do it on the institutional side to you don’t want to embarrass yourself. Bye let’s say failing to send a letter of inquiry if that’s part of the that’s the first step, that latto dahna funder once no, so don’t miss step by not doing your research let’s move the relationship on a little bit now we’re not we’re not the inquiry stage. We’re not at the opening stage now. We’re funding. We are your hyre you’ve selected granted, how can we keep? The relationship strong now we already heard report when it’s not necessary. Keep us involved now some steel you can’t beat your idea. You gotta come with multiple ideas. That’s, why you’re here way also hurt. Share, adversity, tribulations, difficulties along the way. What other advice? Again? Keeping the relationship strong now that we are funded, uh, who wants to anybody could start. Okay, um one one thing that could be a challenge, but i think is also easy to find a potential volunteer for that really makes a difference for us is around honestly high quality pictures of the work that you’re doing if you have a really active social media page. And the reason is that we are not an endowed foundation. So we report to our donors about the work that we’re supporting and it’s really helpful. And unfortunately, some of the grand teeth like it featured the most are those that have really great documentation of their own world. So not every organization can can hyre it’s owned photographer that’s for sure. But i think that’s a good news that may be a volunteer who wants to come learn more about your program if they have. You know, photography skills could be a really great way just just yeah, raise awareness about the work that you’re doing and can i suggest that maybe it doesn’t always doesn’t have to be high production value to be moving and show impact? I’ve seen cases where hyre people who are benefiting from the organizations work? Do you sell do selfie videos and, you know, with some really simple editing tools that could be really compelling, so, you know, they might go on for twelve minutes or so that’s too long, but no, i guess the point is doesn’t have to be high production value necessarily two to convey impacts are so use your social media. Obviously we all know how important video is, how compelling that could be storytelling through pictures as well. Latto you know, let them let them know what the work is that they’re paying for. Please, dad, no, no on b we’ll keep it quick might sound very simple, but i know when i was in very early in my career non-profit that didn’t have much of a development office capacity, um but now i know being on the other and how important make sure your thunders are on your email list, so when you stand out everything about programmatic buy-in aspects or big announcements that, you know, all of your funders are getting those updates that we could focus on your work and that way. Hyre the funders are also updated. Follow him on twitter follow your funders on twitter i mean, it sounds basic, but it might it might get overlooked. Uh, facebook, you know, fan their facebook page, etcetera, etcetera, dahna connect in ways other than what what they’re what they’re requirements are for, you know, quarterly or semiannual reporting or something, you know, connect beyond that again relationship building, right? You’re doing it on the individual side, do it on the institutional side as well. You got something. My name is amy, so you suffer i don’t feel like i’m sorry, okay, so the other thing is about your expectation for us and, you know, it’s important that you have an expectation for us. There are people there are foundations that, you know, everything kind of goes into a black box when when i’m developing a proposal, i actually work with the grantee on the development of that proposal, so i’ll edit it, it’s, not a black box, it’s an intentional, so once we’ve decided we’re going forward, it is a very intentional act, but once you have the grant, the other thing is to consider me as a part of the team, so include us and convene ings, invite us, we may or may not be able to go, but we also have the ability to write and speak. I’ve given congressional testimony on behalf of grantees. You know we are, we can provide you with more than just grantspace port, we can actually provide you with elbow ovaries. We can be helpful to you. We can even bring other funders to the tape. So the more you engage with us as a grantee, more helpful, i can be for you. Excellent examples. Excellent. Thank you, wantto latto. So i know we’ve been talking about social media and videos and high tech stuff, so when i think, though, that that’s very helpful, i think and think don’t know old fashioned is just a meet in person so far after me and i had breakfast today before we came here, and we try to make it a point to remember that for organizations, companies that there’s a person there that you’re talking to, who maybe just got married or so to also build a relationship around the person, not just the institution, i think yeah, as i said earlier, institutions are made up of people i mean, how how plainer can we make the comparisons tear into your individual fund-raising program it’s the same it’s the same strategy keeping keeping informs, inviting you invite your major donors to things, invite your institutional, you’re you’re funders like you said, they may or may not come, but the invitation should always be out there. They should be getting all your press all your tweets, etcetera can’t drive home in it. Let’s, take a break! Wagner cps this testimonial quote, this is my first year and we’re a growing non-profit wagner, cpas. Was completely attentive and gave the impression as if they were right next door when handling our review engagement. Even though we’re in a different state, they made me feel like we were the only client they had, and they were able to walk me through starting up our accounts to finishing our yearly statements. Nothing was too small of a task for them to handle, and they were always available for questions and concerns. The customer service was exceptional, which is a rarity these days and was greatly appreciated. I received great advice and guidance for better business practices from a professional, all while feeling supported and genuinely cared for in the process when your cpa’s really stands out as a partner and i could not be happier with the results. End quote, small cancer research non-profit here on the east coast, supported and genuinely cared for are they butlers, front desk clerks, nurses, first responders, many petty girls are they made her desire somalia’s are they bus boys? Are they airline pilots? Are flight attendants who used to be stewardesses? Remember same baizman when they were stewardesses, slight tennis now of the massage therapists, acupuncturists, nutrition coaches, rehab counselors none of the above they’re wagner, cps, humble weinger cps more than cpas, trusted advisors, you know, they get to know you. I keep reading this testimonial because it’s it’s so, so genuine and just not what you’re goingto see about most certified public accountants. Um, i’ll take care of you and you want somebody who’s going to do that for you going beyond the numbers. Eat. Talk to huge tomb. You heard mi ri a lot about him last week. Talkto him. Good guy. Weinger cpas dot com. Now time for tony. Take two. Show your love. I need you to show your love to our sponsors. Please. These are the companies that are keeping this show. Ah, going to conferences, um, keeping it in the studio month after month, helping me produce the show by sponsoring it. So if cpa’s or fund-raising council and valuable fund-raising content and credit card processing our possibilities for you, then i would be grateful if you would check out our sponsors. You know who i’m talking about? Of course. Pursuing wagner and tell us please show your love to the sponsors. Check him out. Now return to build your grantmaker relationships. So on the corporate side, it about being, you know, you guys being flexible, right? Because, yeah, i can support you through grantmaking and providing volunteers, but there’s also other opportunities, so i always make it. I always make the effort of engaging non-profits where our affinity groups at american express because that if your woman empowerment organization there’s always a way to connect with employees and other ways, right? So we’ll offer volunteers, but we can also bring awareness to our employees, and they could make individual donations through our employees e-giving campaign or through our dollars for doors program, or maybe it’s an opportunity for you to come in and speak to a group of women and just bring more awareness, so the relationship doesn’t just have toe and at grantmaking were always big expanding that relationship and helping you as much as we can. All right, this is a time we’re going to turn teo storytelling. I want it. I want to turn to some examples of how these strong relationships have impacted work on the ground use. Use any example you like one of your one of your grantee organizations and let’s let’s start with anthony. And and the projects on shiny and and why don’t you talk about the work that goes beyond as you were just saying, perfect in trouble, you know, beyond money. So we started our partnership with project sunshine back in twenty ten, and our biggest challenge at that moment was engaging those i mean, where american express that we have several call centers throughout the u s and it’s harder to engage those employees who are you know, their job is basically being on the phone, being in a call center. So we were looking keeper ways to engage these volunteers because, let’s, be honest, most employees want to go out and violence here, but the challenge is finding the time, right? So not every employee has the luxury of going on park and planting a tree for four or five hours, so we thought, why not start this partnership with project sunshine? Who, i’m christine can talk more about what they do create thes care kids that are prepared in house. Esso employees don’t necessarily have to leave the office to volunteer. It only takes one hour. We started that partnership back in twenty ten immediately we got a huge response, because again, people felt like they were able to give back without having to invest so much time fast forward, i think two or three years later, the success of the program helped us build a case to go backto our leaders and say, hey, this is a great partnership were engaging more volunteers we expanded than to other locations on dh we’ve been partners now for seven years, and we’ve engaged over seven thousand employees in the last couple of years, and we’re now internationally. Last year, we started a partnership with project sunshine zoho it’s finding ways of thinking of all your employees population, right? So those who don’t have the flexibility and and i think that’s, what works? Well, that project’s on china heard the challenge that we were having, and they did a great job at finding a solution for us, especially if you’re talking to corporations think broadly again your course way said, your first meeting is not going to the solicitation, you know, make some enquiries. So after you’ve done your research on the web site, maybe talk to some other organizations that, you know they’re funding. However, however you go about your research, especially talking to corporations, you want to think about volunteers because anthony’s point is and please do want a volunteer, and that often is a part of what companies want to give. So it’s more than the money, especially not only limited to companies, certainly, but especially cos don’t think just about, you know, dollars out. Okay, so so how how are your work? Is pediatric patients supporting them and their families? And how are these kids and their families benefiting from this? Is that great questions? So we the healthcare landscape is constantly changing, and oftentimes the child, the patient, they’re stressed and terrified parents, they’re siblings kind of get missed. And so what we do is mobilized volunteers to really provide and come around the child, that the parents, the family, and to treat them the way that if we were the child, the parents or the sibling, we will let me treat it. And so we do a number of different programs we provide in hospital based parties, bringing the joy of childhood into the into the hospital setting, letting kids be kids. So we do that’s one part the part that we work with. American express and a lot of our corporate volunteers are sending sunshine programme, so the sending sunshine program really what’s designed kind of with i mean, american express was a big part of that it’s office based volunteering so volunteer corporate volunteers in their own offices get to ascend, assemble these craft kids so that’s like a standalone craft that that we sent to over three hundred hospitals and medical facilities so that if you i mean, you could imagine if you were a child and you just broken leg, you’re in emergency room, you’re going to be there for four hours, and you have a lot of stressed out doctor’s child life specialists, they able to grab these and give give them to a child to decrease their anxiety, to decrease there, even boredom, to the and to the the sibling who may be with them. And and the care giver is a moment to believe. So that’s one of the that the activities we also create these things called sergi dolls, which are medical play dolls, and we’ve made there’s research behind them about using these dogs to help empower children to understand the treatment that they will. Be going through. And when i first joined projects in china was like, does this really make a difference? And the overwhelming answer from our partners? That, yes, we have a wait list them so clearly there’s a need there, and the and that the need for on the hospital side for these children families that in a line so well with our corporate partners, i think it’s it’s kind of it’s amazing this wind wind that anthony was talking about. So over, i think, with the last time we checked over forty five thousand children, families received these craft kids hyre sergi dolls that american express employees put together, and one recently was around the hurricanes. So the we had said american express has a south florida region regional areas. So we had made a much of craft kits, sent them to hospital suspected by the hurricane. We received this amazing quote phone call from a child life specialist who say you saved our lives. So basically, american express partiers saved our lives because we received i think something like one hundred falik in floods of one hundred fifty two warring families who were clearly distraught and stressed, and the first thing they did was grab as many of these yellow projects on chain bags that are volunteers put together as they could and went from chaos to come. And these were her wits chaos to come immediately. Christine, how do you convey that message to american express that they would feel the impact of their work? So we don’t have a phone call with anthony, and we do try to sow way have a great development team that does a lot of social media, and we’re trying we try to provide photos reporting all the things that we had talked about on this panel so that we could make sure that power corporate incorporate partners feel that, yes, so we did for that specific one we were on the phone, and then anthony, who fed it back to the actual employees from actually we’re in a such a satisfaction right on our employees and those who volunteer because you see the immediate impact, right? So it’s not like going on like a community center and painting a wall blew right there’s really not much impact that you see there? Yeah, you paint the wall, but with these care kids, you know, if one hundred volunteers create a thousand kids, you know that they’re going to get to a thousand kids who need them. So every time i post project’s on shine project on our internet site, it sells out in a matter of like five minutes, like, okay flooded with emails because, again, it’s a good way for employees just donate a now hour of their time and see the immediate impact that these kids have. I could tell caitlin is burning, the answer will come back. I just wanted teo say this is an example of where that sounds like a phenomenal volunteer opportunity where it’s both beneficial in it’s a meaningful volunteer opportunity that’s beneficial not just for the volunteer, but also for the organization. I just want to say this is one of those moments where feel free to push back against your donor, where if they’re really excited and want to send volunteers your way and it’s actually going to create more of a headache, then be helpful or if you work in a context where it’s not appropriate tohave caitlyn as ah white, thirty two year hold american coming in, i thinkyou internationally. But with at risk, youth are more sensitive. Populations feel free to say no, because all too often, i think organizations, especially if it’s, a donor asking, feel i’m required to take on this hungers. And sometimes it’s it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Um the shining of ah story that one repeat that some of the themes that we’ve already heard, and i, i’m reminded of a grantee partner of ours, that it was actually same grantee that i mentioned working in the rural areas of california. Um buy-in they’ve been a grantee of ours for three, three years, so not, you know, like a historic one for us, but not a baby. And we have had an amazing relationship. They send us that the updates we’ve met curated this relationship. We took a tour of the central valley of california, seeing all the work they’ve done, we bought our ceo of our vice president, we met dolores huerta, and we really got to see their work after that site visit. You can tell that the relationship kind of tipped a little bit. You could tell that way had a shorthand. We had a common connection and fast forward to two weeks ago. The head of the project is doing great work, and they’re trying to scale their program. Um, we shopped thiss program director to the ford foundation, to the open society foundation and to an anonymous donor that works in this space. We introduced them tio like mine and thunders that we know here in new york city because we know that their work is so amazing, you know, in the rural areas of california kind of far away from big foundation institutions except for the california down men. Um, so that’s that’s a story that i love that i don’t think that may be a lot of grantees would think to say, please introduce us to your other fundez as you might think, that is a no overreach or or going past, but i think you can get a read on that relationship once it reaches that tipping point. That’s something i’m sure a lot of organization just wouldn’t even think to do. Introduce us to your other funders. Got to take a break, tell us credit card and payment processing. Check out the video at tony dahna slash tony tell us explains the process of businesses getting with tello’s making that switch and how you get fifty percent of the revenue that passive revenue month after month after month think about the businesses this makes sense for in your community and send them to watch the video after you watch. It you watch first, like that car dealership that which i was putting down car dealership. I was thinking i had such a bad such a bad experience. First time i bought a car, i don’t know where my mother and father were, but we agreed on a price. And then the guy the the finance manager put on this one act play festival with the supposedly his the executive above him. About what? What? Ah, what a great price i was getting. It was for me to over here in their office, and they kept the door open and the finance manager was being berated. I told you nothing below sticker. The guy giving me, like a hundred fifty dollars off sticker price, right? I told you nothing below sticker. This can’t happen again. One act play festival happening in this office with the door open for me, the client to hear outside. And so the finance manager comes out, you know, he’s looking sheepish, total total fabrication. I said, is everything okay with our deal? You know, he said he said, everybody has a boss. All right, think about those car dealerships. Tony got a slash tony tell us now, back to building your grantmaker relationships. I mean, you gotta you gotta impact story. I do have an impact story. So in the foundation world, the most popular areas to fund are the arts, education and children, and my foundation does not fund that. In fact, out of one hundred five thousand foundations in this country, only six are primarily focused on older adults, so very, very small group of funders that do work nationally in this space. And we really care about, um, creating age friendly health systems, you know, how are they gonna be responsive to older adults caring about serious illness and end of life and also about family caregivers? So one of the grant is here in new york city, it’s the center towards to advance palliative care, trains people to provide care and make sure that they haven’t vamp scare planning so that their, you know, their goals are what i care is that they get at the end that they relieve suffering. They make sure that people have the care that they need when they go through a very serious illness, even when they’re going to get better from serious illness to help them get through that serious illness. Um, and so the kinds of impact this work has had today, a palliative care is in roughly ninety percent of hospitals nationally. That’s. Huge. It only came to this country in the nineteen eighties. We have been along and sustained thunder in this space, and we may be slowed a warm, but we tend to be a longer and sustained thunder around impact. Um, the other thing was, there were very few funders that were interested in this space. Does anybody remember the death panel? Conversations? Okay, well, thankfully, we’re not having a lot of those today, but, um, there were very few funders that we’re doing focused work in this area. So i decided i was going to start having calls. This was not with the grantee. This was on behalf of the grantspace. I wanted to create a safe learning space for foundations that might be thinking about this. They wanted to learn. And so what’s happened with that. We now have a very large collaborative. People are more strategic. I know people that they want to fund. We fund together some things. We fundez next to each other and other things, um, this past year, about eighty million dollars in new funding was in this space. And this is on behalf of the grantee, the grant he could not have had those calls, but it was necessary to begin. Teo, bring people into the space. And now they’re coming out of the woodwork. We actually did a grant. Teo, give somebody money to help coordinate this crew. Um, you know, coordinate the calls and everything else. So thie impact is huge. The only other thing about this was about seven years ago. I was diagnosed with stage four cancer. And i had been doing this work long before my you know, this is my my area. Um, but then i made a decision. How could i make use of the situation to further healthy grantee? So i’ve been writing, speaking, uh, we’ve put on congressional briefings together. So any other way that i can be helpful, i am definitely shoulder to shoulder with grant. Thank you for sharing. Thank you, kayman a backstory. And then we’re gonna come back to the come back to you. It’ll be peppermint lifesaver time very shortly after caitlin’s kitten’s got an example. Yes. And i would just go back to some power can fund your question around, like, what to do once your rd, a grantee in-kind of in the medium term and how it can be really helpful for the relationship. So just to say one of the key criteria we look for when determining whether or not we’re going to fund an organization for a second a third, a fourth year, is this idea around are they learning organization? And by that we mean a couple of things on one, um, really, the most important is, like i said, we don’t expect programs to go perfectly there’s challenges that come up youth are dynamic and changing issue areas arise eyes um, but really impactful grantees that we have in great relationships in the really impactful programming are constantly learning and adapting and analyzing what went well, what it’s our strength what’s an area for improvement and even again, the same grantee in oaxaca, mexico. So in the course of their programming found that the middle school population that they were working with we’re engaging in self harm and cutting, and they recognized we as an organization don’t have expertise on this. But they themselves reached out, identified an organization in canada that focuses on this and then came to us and said, listen, and our next grant, we would love to include a line item to have training on this to better serve our young people and with a learning organization, i would just say also, openness to feedback, we think, you know, we support programs across the globe and sometimes see similar challenges in best practices, so it’s not donor-centric but being open to feedback is really important, even if you don’t necessarily take it on. And then also with this learning organization comes which sounds li, but playing well with others. So we often ask grantee organizations what other organizations are doing great work in their field and, um, it’s a rite of flag for us if they if they come back and say no one else is doing it as well as we are, which has happened and, uh, yeah, so i would say being a learning organization, playing while collaborating with other service providers, it’s something that we look four and yeah, provides question occurred to me based on what you and amy and we’re saying, especially if you’re being funded, what about? So if none of your funders duitz ask, can we meet your other funders? If you’re a grantee, what about saying we’d like you to meet our other funders? What about the grantee putting that those that possibility together? Is there a downside we’re talking about? Could there be a okay, so so the grantee could think of it. If none of the funders do there’s no doesn’t seem to be a downside to that, and just a just a couple of sentences. Don’t do this. Stop your top, don’t do this. Yeah, the worst thing that you could do is when you have an opportunity to get funding, to listen to the thunder about what it is. You should be funded. In other words, don’t move from your mission if it’s not helpful to your mission and strategy. It’s a disaster, okay. I’m going to just i’ll answer this from my previous foundation experience. One thing was, don’t get angry when you get there, like when you get defunded. So there was one of the things that was very difficult. Was when was for funder, is to not fund that’s very hard, i think, from i’m sure everyone here knows and to have to send out a declination is also hard to have that he met with anger and accusation. Not great. I would say, don’t go into your automatic pitch, right? Because we have objectives. You have objectives. So it goes just backto what we’ve been saying, doing research, and not just assuming all american express is a big company, with so much money that we would necessarily support. I’m sure your mission is important. But it might be something that we’re not is not within our gunman’s, that we would support. So not just going into your pitch and assuming that. Then don’t do it, miss deadlines, this deadline? Yeah, don’t miss deadlines you can man asked for an extension, don’t do it! Eleven fifty nine the day of but my in my over four years in philanthropy, i know exactly those organizations that i think you’re going to fall through the cracks unless our team reminds them and i feel like that’s a perception issue happens with individuals. You won’t know that one person that made a bad impression in your family or at work and that perception than permeates it and then stays. So just have a schedule have reminders have your assistance remind you whatever, but yeah, don’t nastad please there’s so many technical tools that can help you. You do everything from wake up to know when to go to sleep, everything in between. So i used the use the app to use the tools we have bonem to one i would say is don’t fall off the place the face of the earth so we’ve had some grantees just disappear. Yeah, and and not communicating, i would say, even if it’s a one line, you know again in mexico, right after the earthquake, we reshot guarantees how are you doing? So you know, we’re in the trenches, but thank you for thinking of us, boom, or, you know, where is your report? I’m sorry, there’s been delays. Just keep the communication open, so please let’s, join me in thanking that’s. It in-kind christine werner and xero miree. Buy-in i hope you see all the connections between your individual fund-raising and your newly invigorated institutional fund-raising program. Next week, turbocharger grants fund-raising john hicks returns you see how coordinated the show is, grantspace that grants week after week, this is all put together. 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