Ben Cooley: Put Passion & Fun Into Your Fundraising
Ben Cooley brings his energy and warmth as he shares his thinking on intimate donor events; savvy stewardship (Thanking is banking!); your major donor conversations; the critical role of leadership in fundraising; and, a lot more. He’s founder and CEO of Maxwell & Marie.
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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 hebdominal podcast. We have a listener of the week. Deborah Elizabeth Finn. Deborah is moderator of Mission Based Massachusetts, and she sent a lovely email to the group that she shared with me. Saying that our 2026 Outlook show overcame her usual skepticism about forecasts. And she deeply respects Amy Sample Ward, our tech contributor, and Gene Takagi, our legal contributor. I, I should have said, quote, deeply respects them. So we, we overcame her skepticism on, on forecasts and outlooks. She loves our two esteemed contributors. And she even told Mission-based Massachusetts that this podcast has, quote, outstanding guests. End quote. She said nothing about the lackluster host, which I’m grateful for. Thank you. Please leave that out. But I do thank you very much, Deborah Elizabeth Finn, for sharing nonprofit radio with Mission Based Massachusetts. Sharing it wherever you can, I’m always grateful. Deborah, thank you and congratulations on being our listener of the week. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be hit with aestheicoria if I saw that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, with what’s on the menu. Hey Tony and Deborah. I hope our listeners are hungry for. Put passion and fun into your fundraising. Ben Cooley brings his energy and warmth as he shares his thinking on intimate donor events, savvy stewardship, your major donor conversations, the critical role of leadership in fundraising, and a lot more. He is founder and CEO of Maxwell and Marie. On Tony’s take 2. Active listening. Here is, put passion and fun into your fundraising. It’s my pleasure to welcome Ben Cooley to nonprofit Radio. Ben is the founder and CEO of Maxwell and Marie, a boutique consultancy serving mission-driven organizations worldwide with almost 20 years of experience building, scaling, and leading high impact nonprofits. He coaches charity CEOs, teams, and boards, supporting them to strengthen fundraising, clarify strategy, grow income, and increase influence. The company is at Maxwelland Marie.co. And you’ll find Ben on LinkedIn. Ben Cooley, welcome to Nonprofit Radio. Hey, thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate it, Tony. I’m glad you’re with us in, uh, in Nashville, Tennessee. I know, I know some people say to me when they hear me, when I get in an Uber, they go, where? Oh my gosh, I love your accent. Where are you from? I, I tell them Texas. Just, just, yeah, I don’t know what it is about Americans with the British accent. I don’t know. Is this a holdover from. From our colonial days, we, I don’t know. Americans love the British accent. Why? I, Tony, they do. In fact, I hate to say this, but I’ll say it anyway, I get free Starbucks because of it, because particularly in the South, in, in like Nashville, they’re like, oh my gosh, I love your accent. And I’m like, oh well, what can you give me for free? I don’t know. Yeah, you may as well take advantage. I don’t know what it is about the British. I mean, I think, I think Italian accents. I happen to Martignetti, Tony Martignetti. I, I happen to think Italian accents are beautiful, but I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know what, I don’t know what the, uh, what the origin story is for why we are just, I think they’re overrated, frankly, British accents. I think it’s overrated. Well, I have to say I agree with you. I would think the problem is. I’m gonna benefit from it, you know what I mean? I’m one of those horrible people that’s like, yeah, it’s overrated, but I’ll still take, you may as well exploit the love, you feel the love 100%. I just don’t understand it. That’s a, uh, uh, it’s, it’s a phenomenon for, uh, for it’s yearning for probably the days old, isn’t it, you know, but there we go. I was once on a podcast and they said that I was in. Nashville, and they said to me, why, why are you here? Why, why are you here in America? What are you doing? I said, well, I’m here to make America Great Britain again. And, uh, they, they made me the hat, and I’ve wore that many times just for a joke on a party occasion. I understand. Make America Great Britain again. All right, Magba. All right. Don’t do it though. Don’t do that. Yeah, no, we, we need to be our own. Well, we are, we are our own. I don’t think we have any, uh, uh, difficulty showing that we are, we are our own country. We are, we are, are independent. We’re celebrating 250 years of independence. Come on, let’s go. All right. Uh, so you have some, uh, you have a lot of good thoughts about, uh, fundraising, leadership’s role in fundraising, but you, you, you have some concerns too about the very recent, uh, press. So share what I, I think a lot of people share your concerns, but for a little motivation. Share what what brings this to the surface for you. Well, I mean, I, uh, founded an organization, a nonprofit. I grew it, scaled it to tens of millions of revenue. I had over 35 offices globally, 12 countries, raised, you know, um, helped. Hundreds of thousands of people every year in the program, right? But, um, so I take that kind of evaluated experience, and now, you know, sitting with lots and lots of chief executives of other charities that might be smaller, that might be more dependent on one income stream. One of the, Recent concerns that I’ve got and I think everyone’s got is um is how governments are reshaping their giving, not only internationally through development funds, um, you know, we’ve seen that obviously with USAID and with other, The DFID and the new name for DFID and NORAD and all of the kind of big institutional giving has shifted, but it’s happening here federally as well. There are lots of nonprofits that are heavily reliant on government funding. That are now going, actually, we were on that receivership and it was great while it lasted, multiple million dollar, you know, kind of contracts over multiple years, but now is the time to diversify your income streams. And they’ve just recently announced. announced how the shift with the Financial Times announced that there’s going to be a shift from giving to nonprofits in developing countries and rather actually using the local governments to administrate those funds, which means several things. Actually, the way that income is happening now with nonprofits has dramatically changed if you are on the receiving end of governmental funding. And so it’s, I, as an expert, one of the things that I did, I, I, I, you know, like I’m not just someone in theory that’s raised millions. I’ve been there, I’ve done fundraising dinners, I’ve done over myself over 10,000 regular givers, um, I’ve, uh, built Christmas campaigns that have generated millions of dollars. Um, you know, as someone that’s been in this space for the last 20 years. I so desperately want people to diversify their income streams because I’ve watched many of my favorite nonprofits that do great work actually suffer and have to lay off, shut down projects because they haven’t invested in a diverse income stream and they’re heavily reliant on one or two of the incomes that they’ve got. Well, for instance, you mentioned, uh, Christmas, like Christmas campaigns that you’ve run, that leads me to think about the, the reliance on events generally, you know, being too strong, too, too, too, too much, uh, dependence on event fundraising. Yeah. I mean, a, a lot of, a lot of organizations, you know, they do fundraising dinners, they try and raise, you know, try and get 200 people in a room, and, uh, uh, uh, you know, they, they spend $500,000 to 60, you know, $1000 if not more, um, on hosting those people. I, I think things have shift shifted. I don’t think those events work as well as they do. I think they can work, um. Uh, I think if you have the ability to narrate the story well, um, and you’re able to demonstrate activity for the organization and ultimately impact, I think they’re the three things, if I’m looking at a nonprofit, you’ve got to have a great story, you’ve got to be able to tell what you’ve done with that, so how many people you’ve helped, um, and then ultimately, what has that helped meant, right? I think at fundraising dinners. You can raise money, but what I’m seeing more and more locally is um through the nonprofits I’m working with just in the last few years, where the real ROI has come is it’s actually through small househeld events where you get like, we, we got the winner of um some of my nonprofits. That work with me at Maxwell and Marie, um, they, uh, we’ve organized, um, the winner of Hell’s Kitchen, the chef, uh, to come and cook, and it’s been able to get the donors into a more intimate setting where you can just present, but you can actually start walking alongside these donors, because ultimately, I’ll say this, the success of any nonprofit, um, and particularly ones that heavily relies on, Um, high net worth individuals, your resources are in your relationships, and if you aren’t building relationships, your greatest, your greatest asset is the relationships that you have. And so these small local dinners are, are great things that you should be looking at. I used to probably do 20 or 30 of them a day, 30 of them a year for, for my nonprofit. I, I love the, the. Your, your summation of that, that, uh, your resources are in your relationships. Um, and, and I, I think that applies to nonprofits of, of any stripe, whether you, whether you’re cultivating high net worth individuals or more like our listeners in small and mid-size nonprofits, you don’t have those kinds of folks. But it, the resources are still in the relationship. So, and I, I, I absolutely agree with you too about small events. I love, I love sort of not hosting them. I don’t host them as a consultant, but I speak at them. And, uh, going into someone’s home where maybe it’s 6 or 8 couples or something like that, you know, or even sometimes it’s even just 10 or 12 people. Well, that 12 people is 6 couples. Um, but small like that, you know, those intimate events. Uh, you really, I mean, the, the CEO can get, can get to know folks. Maybe you, maybe you bring someone from the program staff or, you know, who’s on the ground. I mean, if it’s, if it’s at all animal-related, maybe you can bring a couple of animals, or pets, potential pets, you know, uh, that you really can move people in, in small groups. I’m not surprised to hear you say you have great success with, you know, 30 of those a year. Yeah, and I think, uh, you know, for me, you know, like I, I was working with a, a startup, nonprofit, first year of trading, and they did one of these dinners, they got 10 couples together, and uh they raised $50,000 you know, in one night, because the founder had such a great narrative and story. And then I think the opportunity from there is then how do you steward those relationships, right? I, I say this phrase often, thanking equals banking, right? If you want the ability to bank another check, it’s actually intrinsically linked to your, your donor thanking strategy, and how do you make them feel seen? How do you make them feel like they’re not just on a conveyor belt? You know, I remember one time I phoned up um. Uh, like I say, I, I ran quite a large operation, um, and, uh, I, I phoned up a donor that responded to one of the events that we did, we did this tour, and we were asking people to give $19 a month. And in that 10 day tour, we got 1100 people respond to giving uh $19 a month. And I phoned one of them up. I was like, uh, they’d seen me speak on the platform, I said, I didn’t want to say thank you so much for giving $19 a month. You wouldn’t believe the lives that are gonna get changed because of your partnership, right? And they were like, what, the chief executive’s phoning me up. I was like, yeah, cos we’re just, it’s the heartbeat of our culture, right? Culture determines what you grow. And if you’re not, if you, if you don’t at the top level, demonstrate the gratitude for the raindrops that are coming in, that ultimately collect and make this tsunami of hope, right? If we’re not grateful for the rain. Drops, then actually, what are we, you know, we’re not being the leader that we should be, right, and so I was just doing, demonstrating to my team and to our donors, you know, uh, the fact that gratitude is at the heart of what we do. It’s not an entitlement, it’s gratitude, and so I phoned this donor up, said, thanks so much. The donor was like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe that you phoned us, this is amazing. They said, I feel so bad, I can give way more than 9. Do a month. Let me go and speak to my wife. I wanna just go, we’re gonna get behind this charity because I’ve never been thanked by the chief executive. I was like, oh my gosh, so he, he goes back and he comes back to me, he phones me up and he says, look, you know, we’re not gonna give $19 a month. We’re gonna give $19,000 a month. I was like, gosh, oh, right, and I said to my team at the time, I said, look, you know. Reality is. People don’t need to give to nonprofits. But when they feel the feeling of appreciation, and you link that with a worthy cause, then. They actually, the, the sky is the limit. We can do amazing things cos people want, ultimately, once people get successful and they have finance, they go to the next era of what they’re giving and what their life wants to do, which is success to significance. And so we have to be great orators of the fact that what they’re doing is significant. You know, I like to get into, uh, details and like action steps, so. After this, uh, glorious oration about stewardship and thanking and I like to use the phrase effusive thanks. I like to give effusive thanks, but, What are your, what, so let’s drill down to some tips, uh, stewardship. I mean, how should we be showing this enormous gratitude that we have? What, what, what, what, what, what do we need to make sure we’re doing right? You ready? OK, I’m, I’m ready. Listeners are ready, please. I said to the, to, to the, to the admin team, to the donor, whatever size you are, right, whatever department it is, right? That within 48 hours, they get a signed letter. I don’t mean like just uh an email, I mean print out a a letter that articulates what this is going to achieve, that donation, whether it’s for $5 a month, whether it’s for $50 a month, for $5000 a month. That they get a letter that’s signed by the chief executive, right, within 48 hours. Now, if it, you know, say if I was traveling because I used to travel a lot, um, I say the most senior person in the, in the office that’s available, right, but within 48 hours they get that. Within 1 week they get a phone call. That articulates gratitude, thank you, link them to what the mission is, right? They then get put on a six week campaign drip. I’m sorry, this is too practical, I, I apologize, but basically it goes, I, I forbid your apology. Well, OK, fine, but I’m practical, practicality is what we want. OK, fine, so basically week one, they get a just a thank you email that’s going to outline. A story of a life that’s going to be impacted. Week 2 is then going to be introducing them to the organization, the Drip Feed campaign, right? So it’s going to be like, this is what we do, this is how we do it, this is, you know, this is the locations that we’re in. It gets them because a lot of people will give because of a story, but that story doesn’t always demonstrate what the organization does, and she, over the next two. It’s gonna be an about us. If you have an about us video, put that in. If you have something that narrates the program and the impact, then week 4, so week 2 and week 3 are about us emails, right? Week 4 is going to be financials. So you’re going to demonstrate your financial integrity, you’re gonna go, look at us, we’re on, you know, Charity Navigator, we’ve got a 100% score on Charity Navigator. Why? Because we appreciate good governance, we appreciate this, we appreciate that, you know, we’ve got our right policies in place. It’s a, a relatively boring email, but actually, for the people that are not heart givers, but are mind givers, right? So they’re the people that sit in a room and going, well, if I gave you a million dollars, what would you do with it? You know, not because you made me cry, here I have all my money. Like, it’s the people are like, I want an ROI on this. Yeah, these are more cereal, these are more cerebral, what percentage of your revenue goes to the program, Exactly, the administration, yeah. Alright. They are the people that have got their donor advised fund and they are going, I want an ROI on this, or they are the people that are going to, you know, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this new, I would encourage your listeners to, to look at them, but like the faith driven. Investor movement, I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, they’re out of Dallas, Texas, and one of the things that they’re, they’re really pointing people towards is compassionate investment. So basically they’re saying, use your donation like it’s an investment into your investment portfolio, right? So it means that actually week 4 is really important to those. Right, because they’re gonna look at it and go, you know, like, they wanna know what’s the percentage of um that’s spent on program versus administration. Now, Tony. I just want you to know to the listeners, I don’t agree. I’m one of those people that disagrees with the 80/20 rule, right? I don’t think it’s possible, particularly for smaller organizations, I don’t think it’s possible, right? I think that 80/20 being 80% spent on program, program, yeah, 20% spent on fundraising, media, admin. You know, a lot sort of stuff. I don’t think that’s not, I don’t think that’s a hard rule, but I’ve heard it, yeah, yeah. And so, and then the 6th is then celebration. Wait a minute. What happened to 5? Wait, where did we go? 5, 4. Did we go 5? We did. We did 4 is, wait, 4 is the no, 3 and 4 are about us. Oh, 5 is the cerebral. 55 is for the more cerebral folks, your ROI, OK. I’m sorry, yes, you did and you did it. 6 is celebration, right? And it’s literally just going organizational celebration moments that you can go, we’re like that combines all of those totals, so it’s a 6 week campaign. At the 6th week, then they get a phone call as well, right? And go, we’re so grateful, we are so grateful, this we you. G 6 weeks ago and you give some form of update of what that that donation has done, right? Then they get put into the normal kind of bog standard, and they get a phone call every year and they get put through. Now, in that 6 week period, you will find that it’s number one, you know, when people give to a regular giving campaign. Or they give one off, it’s where their heightened awareness of you is, right? So like the husband, for example, might be checking the bank account and going, what’s this large donation, who’s this for, you know, well don’t worry, they’ve been in touch, they’ve thanked us, they’ve done this, it’s the, it’s the greatest stress for a non for a nonprofit when they get regular giving. It’s the greatest stress point because it’s where the highest amount of canceled, uh, um, regular givers are, is in the 1st 6 weeks, right, because you’ve got the first initial payment being taken, the second initial payment comes out, it’s like, do they really want to be in, and the greatest stress for that factor is when you actually do sponsored. Events. I don’t know if you’ve ever had anyone come on and talk about like when, you know, a Christian artist or an artist goes out and does those mass 3000, 5000 arenas, and they ask for the big boys of, you know, child sponsorship. Well, the, the greatest risk for those apps. Asks or the out the regular giving is actually in the 1st 6 weeks, so this kind of adds a kind of story and narrative, they get a phone call at the end, uh, and then they get put into um thingy, all the while, every single one of those emails you’re saying thank you so much, thank you, thank you, thank you. What’s the leader’s role, leadership role in, uh, fundraising? The C-suite, maybe the CEO certainly has a role, but board members, let’s talk about leadership’s role in fundraising. Well, I say everyone’s a fundraiser, right? And it’s entirely true. I think actually some people in the organization, um, probably aren’t geared towards fundraising, but they can be geared towards friendraising. You know, if you go back to that, that, that principle, your resources are in your relationships, right, there are people that can introduce you to people, that can elevate, that can um that can contribute, but everyone, everyone at least needs to be a fundraiser. But not everyone can be a fundraiser, but I would say everyone’s a fundraiser, because if they can raise funds, like, if they’re in the program team, they’re a social worker, and they’re related to someone who’s, you know, got a business that’s doing really well, that’s giving 10 million away, like hello, we’re here, you know, like, um, but reality is everyone should be looking to grow the database, and I think that’s often overlooked actually. I don’t, you know, cos it’s, um, but fundraising. Is actually a metrics game. And a lot of, a lot of small nonprofits are going, hey, you know, like I just wish I had more people, I wish I, you know, had more money, I could do so much more good with this money, and you’re dead right you can. But if you’re a smaller nonprofit, I’m talking like sub 500,000, maybe 100,000, 200,000, right at that part, you’re doing great. I mean, not many nonprofits get to that stage, right, so good on you. Well done for all of that. Hard work, the labor that you’ve put into place, but what I would say to you now is, is do what you can to get as many people to just interact with your organization as possible. Go out and speak anywhere that will have you and have a mechanism to gather their data, because ultimately, if I’m stood in front of a crowd, right, uh, and I am allowed to ask them to, to support us, so let’s say if I get in front of 100 people. If I’m allowed to do a regular giving ask, my methodology, which I now teach, I can get, I’ve had up to 33% of people give in an auditorium, um, with this methodology, right, so I was in front of 3000 people in Norway when we launched our Norwegian office, and we got 998 people to give regularly. Uh, so it’s a metrics game. So if you’re only getting in front of as a chief executive, if you. diary or founder, if you’re looking at your next 3 months and you’ve got no speaking engagements, you’ve got no um podcast that you’re speaking on, you’ve got no um no activity that you’re getting in front, I can pretty much guess what your outcome is gonna be. So ultimately, you have to get busy in front of people to get that 4 to 13% of people to actually sign up to your mission and get behind your cause. It’s time for Tony’s take 2. Thank you, Kate. I had the opportunity about 2 weeks ago to meet with a lot of, uh, staff, team members at a client. There are 20 people who, uh, I met with a couple of others. Uh, we had 20, 30-minute meetings in 2 days. And that’s a lot. That’s a lot, but The value, what came out of it. I learned so much from these folks. Because I was really listening actively, intently. Carefully. I was taking some notes, but I was mostly just listening to their tone and, you know, we were talking about what their, Goals are within the, within the nonprofit, what they’d like to do, the challenges that they see, ways to overcome those kinds of challenges. It was just reinforcing for me, you know, the value of asking open-ended questions and just letting people talk and then, Me listening carefully. I, I came away with so much. Insightful, uh, informative. Like sort of data That will help me to help that client. So, this, this certainly has implications for your fundraising, you know, when you’re meeting with folks. So really I’m just, I think just reinforcing something you probably already know. How valuable it is just being the listener, the careful listener, the active listener. You come away with learning so much. And that is Tony’s take 2. Kate, Yeah, usually Uncle Tony is the one talking, so he doesn’t get much practice listening. I, I, it’s very good. I listen, I listen, uh, as much as possible. I mean, this is Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. I mean, I do have a role here, associate producer. Soon to be assistant producer, if you keep up this uh thread. By the way, assistant is below associate. I don’t know if you’re aware of that. You are aware, OK. No, no, that was very good. Nicely, nicely played. Yeah. Oh, by the way, your, uh, your brother was laughing in the background. I, I heard a quick little chuckle from him. Yeah, well, he’s not getting, uh, he’s not getting part of the revenue the way, uh, the way you do. There’s no, no, no fee for him. We’ve got bou butt loads more time. Here’s the rest of put passion and fun into your fundraising with Fen Cooley. Now what’s this methodology you have that you alluded to that you’re teaching, but you tease it. He’s the guy teases it, but then he doesn’t, doesn’t flush it out. Tony, get it out of me. Get it out of me? What, what’s the methodology, right? So most nonprofits, when they speak at a church, right, or they speak at an event. They’ll do the easiest, easiest cos no one likes asking for money, can we just like kind of like put this principle out that no one really likes asking for money and if you do, good on you, you’re not part of the, like, you’re not, you’re not part of the norm, right? Um, so particularly founders, they feel embarrassed of the fact that they are asking for money, because often some of that money’s going towards their salary or, you know, it’s covering some of the expenses and they feel embarrassed by it, and I get that, you know, I had a mentor of mine that um developed a charity called Christians Against Poverty, right, in the UK and they pride themselves of getting over, I think there were over 25,000 regular givers. He sat me down one time and he, he, when I, I, the first thing I ever did, right, was I got 5, I booked an arena in England, I got 5,884 people to my first event. And then I did a regular giving ask and it absolutely sucked. I I got hardly anyone give, right, and he sat me down after this, he went, you suck. I was like, thanks, bro, I really appreciate the encouragement. He said, no, what you need to do is you need to stand on a platform and tell people, I’m gonna ask you for money, but I really am really bad at this. So can we just all agree I’m bad, but the mission that we’re doing is worth this ass. Right, so, most non-profits take the easiest out, right, and they go and they say, OK guys, so please could you give, and if you just wanna head back at the back table, I’ve got some flyers, you know, maybe you could give 4%, the maximum. I’ve got, by the way, I’ve done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these events. You know, I was, I’m not joking, right, I had, at any point in time, I. 70 trained speakers going out in churches and speaking in churches every Sunday, 70 trained speakers, right? So, like I’ve I’ve aggregated all that data, 4%. If you send people to a table, this is what’s gonna happen, there’s gonna be a massive queue at that table, right, and they’re gonna go, then probably about 7 people are gonna be able to speak to you because one person wants to tell you. That they are really moved by your charity and oh my God, you know, like, and 7 days later you’re still talking to that same person, right? And if you’ve got a British accent, it’s longer, but I don’t know why. Anyway, so you’ll get 4%. So if you’ve got 100 people, that means 4 people are gonna give to you. If you’ve got 200 people, that’s 8, right? Then the next thing is this, if you’re brave enough. You go and speak to the event host or the church pastor or whoever it is, right, and you say, can we put the, the giving envelopes on the chairs, right? Well, you’ve just increased it to 9% by doing that, right? Yeah, you go, hey, give, give now and everyone get the flyer. Oh my gosh, now as I’m telling this story, fill it out, right? That’s 9%. Now if you want to get over 13%. It’s gonna be hard, and I’m not gonna lie, this is not made for the, like, for the faint of heart. I, I just want you to know this, right? QR codes, I’m not a big fan of. Every organization I’ve dealt with in the last 3 or 4 years that does QR codes, what happens is people get out the phone, they scan the QR code and then they get a text from their daughter or from thingy and they get distracted into work, right? I don’t like that methodology, it might work for some, but I’ve not seen it with any of our clients, right? Um, so, and, um, even at high net worth individual, uh dinners, I don’t rate it, right? Still in America, you guys have got something called checks. Like, and we got rid of those in the 1980s, guys. It was unbelievable, you know what I mean, that’s, I think we live in Nashville, Tennessee, you, you live in Nashville, Tennessee, what we, I know, I still use checks and I, I still, every time I have to Google how to fill it out. Anyway, so Google, yeah, yeah, right, so 13%, if you wanna get above 13%, this is what you do. Tony, this is what you do, and it’s awful. You need volunteers for this, you need to be so organized, right, you basically, you pass the buckets down, you go, I’m gonna give you, I’m gonna do a regular giving ask right now. I’m gonna ask you to partner with us on a monthly basis. We’re going to have the team pass the buckets down the rows. This is not to put anything in. But this is actually to take the form out. Now, I used to run an anti-slavery organization, right? It, and it’s almost like you are taking someone’s life out of slavery, right now. And now, it adds a component to this, because you get the decision, psychology of giving, right, is you get the decision when the book is passing, are you going to pass by on this opportunity, or are you going to be the person that’s going to be the person that helps? And so suddenly, psychologically, you’ve just triggered them into not only themselves thinking that, but now they’re also thinking everyone else knows that I’m not taking it out. And so you get a higher percentage, and then what happens is you fill out the form normally and then you pass the buckets back, so it’s like super or what are they taking out of the bucket, a, a monthly, a regular form, monthly sustainer, a sustainer giving commitment. And then they, and then they pass it back somehow. And then, and then once you, you finish, you often play a video of a life being transformed and then you get back up and you say, right, we’re gonna pass back the buckets and you’re gonna put the envelopes in like you are putting your name, your family’s name in there saying I’m in it to end it. Come on, are you’re with me? Say amen. OK, and then you get, you’ll get a lot higher, and that that’s what it’s interesting, it’s why I’m so passionate about fundraising, cos a lot of people put the energy into curating these events or these Christmas campaigns, but if they just had a little bit higher thinking or a little bit of a different. Unique, then actually they could go from 11 organization I work with was doing a Christmas campaign, they, they literally raised 20,000 in their Christmas campaigns. They’re now hitting 20 300,000, because they’re just tweaking it and doing different things, but those different things have different results. What’s with uh Maxwell and Marie, your, your company, who, who are, who are, do they exist? Who are Maxwell and Marie, or they exist, or they, what, you’re, yeah, it’s me and my wife, she start my uh wife started a nonprofit and uh and I started one and so we decided that we would do uh all of our uh experiences that we’ve done. Uh, we would put them together into a boutique consultancy. We don’t work with a lot of organizations. We just work with a few that we think we can, um, more than double in a, in a, in a, you know, 2 or 3 year period. But who, who are, well, where’s your wife? She’s not, uh, why, why didn’t you pitch the, you and your wife talking as guests. My wife, you should have her next time, but she is way better looking than me, and we have 10 children, so she’s currently holding the 10 children back from invading this podcast right now, so yeah. So you have 10 children in, in one house, in, in one house? Yes sir, yes sir. Damn. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a lot, it’s, I’m, I, I’d say, yeah. It’s 2020 years old all the way down to 7 months old. All right, congratulations on the, on the most recent birth of. All right, I can understand why. All right, I can understand why your wife’s not with us. You need, you need actually professional help, not, not. So who are, but who are Maxwell and Marie? So it’s Maxwell’s my third name, Marie is her second name. And so we kind of had that, uh, and, you know, I’ve kind of, through that, you know, we’ve been able to help, not only with fundraising, you know, we help with coaching, with fundraising, but I’ve launched other brands that kind of like, I’ve launched a company called Good Bookkeeping.com. Um, which, uh, helps nonprofits with their bookkeeping, um, uh, because one of the things people ask me, how did you do it? You grew to tens of millions of revenue, and I was like, I understood my numbers. I mean, my, my number 2 was a former CFO of, um, the 13th largest company in the UK. And so our numbers were, not only was I good at telling stories, but what most nonprofits don’t realize is, is their finances are telling a story too, and they have to narrate those through their 990s, through how they get their, their, I, I mean I literally we had a um a nonprofit just recently come to us. They lost a million dollar donor because of their charity commission. Uh, the charity navigator score. Yeah, yeah, no, I’ve, yes, I’ve heard things like that. Also, just disclosing finances to donors who, you know, they, we’re doing donor conversations, just sharing what the, what the numbers are like, but even if it’s a hard reality. I mean, even, maybe even more so if it’s a hard reality that you want your, you want your investors to be aware of that you’re, this is a down year. You’re, or you’ve had a couple of down years, you know, and, but the mission is still important. The, the team is still outstanding. So that the, the giving has not been there, and, and here’s what we’re doing to turn things around and part of that is having this conversation with you. That’s absolutely true, you know, one of my favorite conversations with a donor, Tony, was, um, a guy that founded a very, very large, um, uh, car rental company, right? It’s, um, and, uh, he said to me, Ben, I’m just wondering why this year’s finances don’t look as strong as last year’s, he said. I said, oh, that’s because every time I meet with you, you only give me 10,000. If you gave me 100,000, it would change it. He went quiet. You did, all right, did he up his giving? Oh yeah, of course he did. I was able to, yeah. And, uh, how about, uh, Nashville, Tennessee? How, how did you land there from, I don’t know, where, where are you from in, in the UK? I’m I’m from a little town called Yarm. I moved to Manchester, which was where my headquarters was, but um, uh, I, um, I actually took over a, a nonprofit in, um, so part of, I’ve built this thing called the seven pillars of a sustainable nonprofit, right? And it goes through the seven income streams that you need, right? Once you get to 10 million, you can do something called merger and acquisitions, right? And so I, I did, I started doing merger and acquisitions. One of the ones was in Nashville, Tennessee, and so I knew Nashville when COVID happened, I thought, let’s move here and. Uh, I love, I, I am a massive fan of America, so, like, I know, uh, like British people are gonna hate me right now, but I’m telling you right now, America is where it’s at, and I love it, and, uh, love the, not only, I love the, the, the, the business environment, I love the people, and I love the culture. I just think it’s amazing, it’s not small thinking. Outstanding. So you’ve been here just what, 56 years? Yeah, yeah, but I’ve worked here since 2013. What about the hat collection behind you? Uh, listeners, you can’t, you don’t have the, uh, benefit of the video, but, um, Ben has, uh, I don’t know, 68, 10 hats hanging on the wall behind him. This is his, his Zoom background. My, my Zoom background is this sign that says professional zoom background, which is put on with painter’s tape, and I’ve written in the word professional and I didn’t leave enough space. So I get, that’s my background there. But why, why, what’s the hat collection? Well, it’s just because I’ve got a really pretty wife. That just wears beautiful hats, so um it’s a very sudden, she’s American, so it’s a very sudden thing to have lots of hats on, like cowboy, no, I don’t think they’re quite the cowgirl hats are one is maybe one is like a cowgirl hat, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, the wider brims and flatter brims. All right, so these are your wife, does she wear them, or they yeah, she wears them, yeah, oh yeah, definitely. She wears, she, you know, she’s got the kind of uh the southern charm. Um, it’s, it’s mildly annoying to her really, because, you know, um, they’ll often say if we’re in a drive-through, they’ll say, oh my gosh, I love your accent, and then they’ll go, are you from there too, and she’s like. No, I’m not. And she, and they’re like almost disappointed, they’re like, oh, you’re just one of us. She’s just got a flat southern, where’s she from? What state is she from? Well, she’s a navy brat, so she’s from everywhere, everywhere, all right, so she does not have a, she doesn’t even have a southern accent. Yeah, no, she doesn’t, she just has an what I would call a standard American accent, but she, she started a nonprofit in Uganda, um, and she, uh she uh runs an organization that, that actually it’s brilliant because it’s the only organization. In the world that faces this one issue, a neglected tropical disease called jiggers, and so she, she, her team, she has about 80 staff out in, in Uganda that remove jiggers from people’s feet, and then, and then put, put, make shoes for them. So she’s made 360,000 pairs of shoes in the last, uh. The bad years for um for children in outstanding. What’s the name of the organization? Shout it out. It’s called Soul Hope, S O L E H O P E. Soul like a sole of a shoe, Soul Hope. Yeah, she’s way better at marketing than me, she’s the genius at it. Let’s talk about your, your coaching. You, you do a lot of coaching of, uh, CEOs, maybe other C-suite as well. But, uh, uh, about major donor conversations. The, the, I, I, I was kind of alluding to it when I was talking about individual conversations, you know, investment types of conversations. Not necessarily high net worth. Let’s not, let’s not focus on high net worth individuals, but major donors, you know, maybe they give it to $5000 10,000, $15,000 level, 20,000, maybe, you know, but they’re not necessarily high net worth, they’re just enormously generous. What what’s your, what’s your advice around those, those one on one conversations? Well, number one is have them. Don’t avoid it, don’t be afraid of them, don’t be afraid, because look, I, I mean. Um, I, I, I think this is really important to tell is that. Um, it’s that they are wanting something from the relationship too. Right And if you can figure that out, you know, I talked about success to significance. Often the people that are in that point, you know, they’re, I, I, I’m part of this organization called Halftime, which was started by a guy called Bob Buford. Sorry, Scott, say it again. Halftime. Halftime. Yeah, and it’s, it’s basically to help leaders that have done something with their life, figure out why, why it all happened and how to make sense of it and, you know, what to do with it and how to steward that success to significance, and. I, I think where for me is number one, make sure you make available the time, and by the way, you probably have more capacity for those relationships that you think. I mean, I, I had 14 direct reports, I had 12 countries, I had. 100s of staff, 100s and 100s of staff in my organization. Um, but I still managed 80 relationships that were my significant relationships. Some of them, it all depends on where they were in the, this, I didn’t just categorize them as like, this person’s a billionaire, so he’s my friend. And now, you know, I’ve grown the charity and the nonprofit larger, these people drop off and I’m gonna palm them off. It was, it was actually born out of a relationship and um but number one, you can probably manage more than you think you can, right? And 2 is, uh, they don’t mind you kind of scheduling things like, so for example, they know if if you’re gonna run this well, hey, they’re gonna touch base with me once a month just to give me an update personally or a text, but where it gets really, where you get really good results is that you go beyond the organization into actually being. A former friend for them and that you check in with them. Look, I, I said this to, I say this to my team often, right, that a lot of people that have the ability to drop 5000, 10,000, they’re in leadership somewhere on the spectrum or ownership of a business. And often that means that they’re isolated, right? And they don’t have people to talk to, and so these sorts of connections that you can do are mega. I’ll give you one example. So I used to, you know, I used to try and meet up with coffee, I used to text people, I used to write to them, I used to do, you know, meet, you know, meet for lunch. I always used to pay, by the way, I never used to let them pay. Because a lot of the high net worth individuals that I would, or, you know, major donors or whatever the terminology of that, when I was a small charity and I did it out of my basement, someone who gave me $500 was a high net worth individual to me, do you know what I mean? So the definitions change, but, um, but, um, uh, I used to, uh, I used to write to this one guy, right, he was someone I was trying to approach. I met him once and I said, I wanna, I, I actually wanna help this, I want, I wanna be friends with this guy as well as I’d love him to support. He came from wealth, but he started his own company from scratch. And I used to, I set up a Google alert to watch whenever his business got mentioned or had any success, and I used to write him a handwritten card. Uh, very smart, yeah. And I said, well done. I’m really proud of you for this achievement. He never res respond. I did it for 7 years and he never responded to a text, a phone call, or, or anything. And I admire your commitment. I, I, doing it for 7 years and not getting a reply, you kept it up. OK. 7 years. Well, he was on the, it wasn’t just because he was on the up and up. I knew at one point in time, this guy would need me. Cos I just, I knew, I know these people are, are, I don’t mean this in a self-inflated way, I don’t hear that, don’t, don’t hear that I’m being, I just knew me and him could, when our first interaction, I knew we had something that we could be friends with. And 7 years later, he phoned me up and we’re best of friends, and Uh, he’s, what, his business is over a billion revenue, but like, he is just such a good human being, and he’s given tremendous amounts to charity. But it took 7 years of persistence that he knew I wasn’t just a. I had integrity in it, and I, I, I firmly believed in him. I thought he was gonna, gonna do great things with his life, and he did. Let’s, let’s talk more about these, uh, these relationships. The, uh, stewarding them, managing them. So you’re, you’re being, you’re committed to them. They’re, I, I would call them professional friends. I mean, you’re, you’re treating them as friends, but there is a professional relationship to it. You can be helpful to them in their, in their giving. They can be helpful to you through their giving, maybe through their companies, um. So, uh, uh, that’s how, that’s how I would characterize it. But let, let’s talk more about that. You know, what, what, what advice you give your, your CEOs for, for managing these relationships. So, I mean, it’s, it’s, this is one of the major things that I do with my life right now is I sit with chief executives and I tactically go through it with them, right? And I, I have a team that does this because number one, they’re all unique. You know, and you’ve got to do some research on, on the individuals, find out what, what their giving factors are, what motivates them, but my number one thing is this, is I would not. Ask them All the time. In fact, I probably got to a point where I would ask them every couple of years, maybe, potentially to give, because what I didn’t want to do was to make it transactional. I would make it, I would make it an authentic friendship. And then where I would get them involved is that I would invite them to do a challenge with me. So, um, uh, a challenge that I raised, I think, I think over a million dollars in the early stages of when, like, that was probably double my revenue, right, was I built these relationships and I invited them to do a challenge with me because I was like, we’re friends, let’s do something together that it gets you excited, me excited, and also gets more people engaged, right, in the mission. And so, um, we rescued a girl that was trafficked from Latvia, uh, to Southampton, England. And, um, and so I, I got them involved in the conversation, include them in the conversation, so there was a group of 5 of us, one of them was a major celebrity in the UK, one of them was a high net worth individual, and we, we’re going, right, right, this girl was trafficked from Latvia to Southampton, what could we do? To raise money so that we could name one of our new locations after her, cos one of the things that I did was, every location was named after one of the people that we rescued or we helped, right? So the first um one that came out into Bradford, England. Was called Emma’s hub after the first goal that we rescued, called Emma. The second one that we were gonna launch was Zoey’s hub, after Zoey, who was trafficking from life, so we were discussing, how are we gonna do this, so, number 1, be inclusive, right, don’t just tell them what you need. Actually, don’t just do push down leadership, actually invite them in to, uh, problem solve with you, right, so I was like, we need to raise a million dollars, how are we gonna do it? And so one of them round the table said, I know what we should do, we should do a marathon, and I was like. No, marathons are from the devil, bro. Right? And so like one of them was like, hey, we should do a, we should do a cake sale. And I was like, we’re not gonna raise a million dollars from a cake sale, bro. And then one of us had an idea. We should cycle from Latvia. To Southampton, and I was like, yes, right? So at that point in time, I’ve got to say to your listeners, right, I thought Latvia was next to France. Right, now if you want to get out on that, it’s not next to France, no, it’s next to Russia. It’s 2,715 kilometers, 2000 miles away, right? By that time, back, this is back in 200 and 2015 I think it is, right? I think it is, anyway. And, so one of the celebrity that had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers, like literally just tweeted out, we’re doing this, right, we’re gonna cycle from Latvia to Southampton, right? The next week, before we’d even arranged how we were gonna do it, we were, and we were on national news, national, in the UK, right? So this momentum was building, and there’s nothing like, I wanna say this, this is a side note, if you take. Taking notes, remember, note takers are history makers, right? Momentum is what you need to demonstrate, right? In in America particularly, people give to what is successful and is moving forward. If it feels stagnant and it feels like you’re losing all the time, please sir, can I have some more, that’s Oliver Twist, right? But they, they end up going, oh man, I don’t want to be given to these people. I wanna begin to think that are successful. I wanna give something that has momentum. So you need to be a great narrator of momentum. We’re gonna be doing this, we’re gonna, so this challenge was our momentum builder. We had over 115 people join us on this cycle, right? We cycled from Latvia all the way through Latvia, all the way through Lithuania. I didn’t even like cycling. I hated cycling. Right, but we had major companies sponsor us, we were on like radio shows, TV shows. By the time that we got to England, we were doing two conferences in a day, cycling, and then getting off doing sometimes 130 miles, getting off, speaking at a conference, cycling again, speaking at another conference. We, and the momentum was insane, right? But that’s what got High Networth is individuals involved, where they were writing big checks, because they weren’t just feeling, oh my gosh, they want money from me, they wanted to be included, they wanted to be part of the story and they wanted to fulfill, feel the feel the momentum of doing something with their life. So yes, meet them for coffee, yes, give them updates, yes, tell them about your need, but include them in the problem of your nonprofit. And get them to do something with their life, their skill, their passion for it, and guess what happened because of that. Then lots of people heard about us, our database grew, and that people were like this is a fun charity, so then a few years later we cycled from um, From Cambodia to Vietnam, and I had, I think it was 40 people fly out and do it with us, it was amazing. Make it fun, right? There’s a reason why there’s fun at the beginning of fundraising. And, and this is really important, if you’re a leader of a nonprofit, right, I just want you to know this, right? I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Winnie Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, right? But no one in the history of ever wanted to follow Eeyore, right? Oh, we’ll never change. Oh my gosh, it sucks to be good, it’s so hard, nonprofits, the governments are changing that, we’re never gonna be, all I wanted to do was change your life, but it’s just poor me. Now they don’t wanna follow that guy, they’re following Scott Harris that’s done charity water, that’s told them that they can do extraordinary things with their life, they’re following Gary Haugen from IJM that’s actually talking about how do we mend fractured, broken justice systems, and we can do something extraordinary. People want passion in their life and they want to be told they’re doing a good job, they’re having a significant part to play, and they’re celebrated all the way through it. I, I wish we could get guests who were more enthusiastic, you know, more, more passionate, more interesting. Uh, I, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, we, I’m sorry we, we, we struck the bottom here with Ben Cooley. No, I mean, it’s amazing. Uh, all right. The, the, there are, there’s brilliance buried in all that passion. Uh, I wish you could see his arms are flailing. He has to keep fixing his hair because it’s, it’s falling on his face because he’s moving around so much. Ben Cooley, outstanding. Uh, I, I, I admire, of course, I admire your, your enthusiasm, your passion, and, and the valuable advice you, you bring to, to listeners. So thank you. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. CEO of Maxwell and Marie, you’ll find Maxwell and Marie at Maxwellanmarie.co. Connect with Ben on LinkedIn, but I already sent you a connection request. I hope you’re not gonna refuse it. Will not. No thank you. And it was a, it was a real pleasure. Uh, what a great way to kick off the week too. We’re recording on a Monday. Thank you so much, Ben. God bless you. Thank you. Next week, Monthly Giving with Dana Snyder. Indeed, uh, Dana Snyder was supposed to be this week. Yep, that’s, uh, that’s a host, host, uh, I wouldn’t say quite a host mistake. It just so happened that Ben came in quicker than Dana. Dana will indeed be next week. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you, find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.
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