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Nonprofit Radio for April 14, 2017: Subtle Steps To The Ask

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Gail Perry: Subtle Steps To The Ask

I invited Gail Perry back live after we rebroadcast her in March because I was reminded how much energy and simple smarts she has. For this show, she shares her strategies to prep your donors for successful solicitations. From her home in Raleigh, NC, she’ll be on Facebook Live and I’ll be on Periscope. Gail’s book is Fired Up Fundraising.

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of maya clinic dystonia if you moved me with the idea that you missed today’s show subtle steps to the ask invited gail perry back live after we re broadcast her in march because i was reminded how much energy and simple smart she has for this show, she shares her strategies to prep your donors for successful solicitations. Gayle’s book is fired-up fund-raising we are calling in from her home in raleigh, north carolina, and we’re on face and more on facebook live and periscope to get to that in a second sarrantonio take two non-profit radio on stanford social innovation review. We’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers. We the spelling dot com so today’s show is on periscope through me i’m at tony martignetti and there’s i’m turning to periscope if you want to join us on periscope, check me out. At tony martignetti and we’re also on facebook live jail perry that’s fired-up fund-raising page on facebook is over here on her phone facebook so join us for a live video, anyone nasco or, um or fake work-life and i am really pleased teo excited, please. A lot of things to be in jail. Perry home. She is an international fund-raising consultant, you know, speaker, trainer and philanthropy leader. She was a frontline fundraiser at the university of north carolina at chapel hill. And over her thirty years she has helped loads of organizations grayce hundreds of millions of dollars, her book is fired-up fund-raising turn board passion into action published by wile e. And you will find her at dale perry dot com she’s also at deshele perry and see gil perry i waive attorney is just such an expert, and he knows the fund-raising business inside an outward so, so much fun to be talking. Shop with him today school and thank you for having me for a beautiful woman. Raleigh um, yeah, thanks so much. You know we’re a little steps the ask what do you see as the sort of the problem? Why? Why? Why is it worse us talking for an hour, about subtle steps to the well, you know, the ask is so the moment of truth for fundraisers and people bungle asked, i think more often than they make them successfully and lots of times i don’t know if you’ve ever been asked for a gift, and it was it felt like an affront like people just came out and blurted it out, and you’re going book, you know, i have felt like that more than once i got my way do not want donors feel like it’s in a front yard, a different level of giving a beautiful side streets on oh my god, you’re with these ideas are blooming and yes, values are blooming right now. Alright, your level of giving yeah, i mean, i’m still on the clock, but it’s still like asking is tough and it’s offered and it’s done so poorly and and you’re not going to be successful if you make your donor go, but you know their ways tiptoe up to the donor and you want to feel the donor right every step of the way to make sure you’re spending the right time with the right person and that your donor is is going down this pathway, there’s literally a pathway to take your donors on so that your donorsearch gets a point where they can say i’d love to help. You have going to help you. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Dahna says, how can i help you? We have done a good job of cultivation, so we’re making some mistakes in the preparation of the abilities of the subtle steps to yes, you ask. Okay. Okay. You like to talk to you in your actual steps? You like to talk about getting permission? Yes. Permission for the way you should never you should never surprise a donor with with a nasco dahna needs to know the ask is coming. I mean, look, a lot of us have been invited. Teo askem, it is like a luncheon, you know? And somebody asked you to fill their table. And you think this is gonna be nice? Get benched and learning about this? Non-profit and you said there and you were pitch to light with a hard ass staring at the pledge card. And you’re asked for, like, ten minutes to look at the pledge card thing. About what you can do and it’s it’s. Not a good idea. It ticks off donors, i think, to be surprised with an asking from the front and also the larger donor. You want to find out the donor’s really ready to discuss asking with you were discussed a gift with you and all these little steps are you? You gently put an idea on the table and you find out donor-centric sted and then you’re discussing the idea. And then you ask certain questions and all of a sudden bingo there’s your ass. So it’s not like this question that happened out of the blue and let me let me tell you a quick story way your city. I was coaching a young woman who was raising money for community college in manhattan, and she had a great relationship with this alumni couple and very social. They’re very happy. She loved hanging out with this couple and she took them to lunch and she asked them for gift of fun, front of scholarship and they were stoned. They were stunned. They probably fell out of their chairs. They had they were thinking they had a social relationship and that she was doing this for fun. And so my young friend missed some of the subtle steps. Tio remind the donors that she is a fundraiser and that her job is really the match. The boners, up with their interest at the organization aboutthe total, non secular, and people are. People just don’t know how to do it way. Don’t want to make your donor fall out of the chair. You know, we don’t want to do that, okay? So the first step it’s a couple minutes before we take take a first break way wantto make sure that the people are we’re talking to will we call them prospects? I don’t like think that’s offgrid potential donor potential does a little or like very clinical. Yeah, potential donors if we’re gonna be on that. So you want to make sure your potential donors are qualified? Yeah, first of all, let’s talk about qualifying a potential donor or a prospect to use some technical language that may not be coos. You. You you qualify a donor and you do two things you determined that they have the interest in your cause that can be developed and they have capacity to give. So qualifying your donors is a journey you’re always looking for cues. You gas your donor here’s some here’s, some questions that’s your donor to determine capacity. What do you do in your spare time? Tell me about your work. You know, you tell answer. Don’t tell you about their work and all of a sudden they say i manage a hedge fund fund-raising you do in your spare time, you know, ski the ski around the world the alps and the rockies, you know, the donors will tell you these things, and they are accused about a donor’s financial capacity, and one of my friends is fun right before hospital, and she says, navid, you’re out of the hospital. Do you plan to travel? And if the donor says, oh, yeah, we’re going to go around around the world cruise now that i’m well, she knows she has the prospect, at least with capacity, and if the donor’s says no, we’re driving the rv down to florida and we’re going to camp out for a little while. She knows that this person is not gonna be a prospect for a major gift, so you want to determine capacity and their loss of different ways. But i’ve written a lot of my block gil period dot com about screening on doing research on prospects to find that capacity. Okay, so there’s, just one topic, right? And we’re gonna come back to the sea and back to pass because i have more questions to ask you about. Yeah, that was more organic way don’t telling you. Yeah, but there are other ways, and you’re a part of that which is the interest, yeah, so we going for our first break right now, and when we come back to court, i’m going to keep talking. Ron, we’re live on facebook at fired-up fund-raising page, and we are live on periscope at twenty martignetti stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website financer, p dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Around a break right now. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent of your aptly named host marin gail perry’s home raleigh, north carolina i have to live with love a time way, got multiple channels live were not only we’re not only streaming live that st louis, missouri with us, tampa, florida hello, live this love to you st louis and tampa woodbridge, new jersey watching latto listening live uh, to the livestream we’ve got ireland and then we have something called uk, so i don’t know if that’s also ireland or it could be england or wales. I don’t know, but island live up to you. Yeah, marin and was on with some facebook labbate maria pompel cool love fremery simple, yeah, yeah, we’ve also got somewhere united states somewhere besides st louis in tampa and ah, woodridge, that could be maria simple. So live listen love already who’s listening live right now by the podcast podcast i can present for those you’re gonna catch it on the podcast when it comes when you close in on their own schedule. Over twelve thousand people now live through itunes, stitcher hot day player, other other smaller podcast platforms, so pleasantries to the podcast listeners and of course, i remember you, pally infections could be a bayonet in that station, this year’s throughout the country am fm stations throughout the country. Thank you. Affections, affections for am and fm sustainers wherever, whatever time of day and whatever day just patient fits. Not probably you into your schedule into its schedule. I’m glad you’re with us. You know that somehow you’re listening on that station. And this is the number of a radio dot com with tony martignetti and gail period case you’re joining late. You can take you during some periscope or facebook live late non-profit radio. We’re talking about the subtle steps to the asking where you are in paris, home in raleigh. Okay, wait. You have qualified potential donor there are talking to andi. You give examples, do it zoho kind of person says with applications would like suppose it doesn’t come that easily to us way have the opportunity to be meeting a person, uh, about research from our people will be able to help us. How else could be? Oh, yeah, we determined. Yes, well, if you’re trying to get ready to ask a donor of course, what we’re trying to do is figure out if they’re qualified and we want to determine interest level and capacity to give. So when you’re looking at capacity prospect research online is they go mama and you can simply google your donor or goethe linked in lincoln is a really interesting story because you can you can find out who is connected to the stoner, and sometimes you can find that board members have connections to donors. So online resource is maria simple is with us and she’s, the online prospect research guru ourselves? Yes. Your primary at the prospect finders gotta give her a set out. She’s our prosecutors contributed a a very big proponent of using living. Yeah, research. Yeah, yeah. And then there are other sources. Might be my favorite way to qualify. A prospect is toe ask around about the prospect. I like to do something called screening sessions and i just wrote a blogged about screening sessions a couple weeks ago. The agitator blood picked it up. Yeah, way. Yeah, yeah, a lot of attention. Rather praise with cerini sessions with black i thought i’ve done it got died and gone to heaven. I’d reached the pinnacle of my overtired market fremery including anything about what’s appropriate and what’s kind of yes in non-profits yes, but a training session is when you have a short list of donors and you go than each name and you discuss these names or potential donors or prospects with another person or with a small group of people and it’s a delicate conversation because some people are not comfortable talking about this, but not your usual out on your friend’s basically, well, i believe with usually people who are donors to an organization and their leaders that the organization, they no other major donors, they want to help you bring these people in and it’s like fund-raising strategy generally willing, well, it that you want to find out, and also i have a friend i’m coaching and major gifts right now, and she said that she’s been instructed to call a donor and say, would you please engage in a priority prospect review with me? And that sounds intimidating, but instead, if you said with human brainstorming about some potential donors with me, that is a different way and you get a different response, so i didn’t think that a lot of how we are about our work makes a big difference about how what kind of reaction we get. We’re very formal and like, ooh, this is awkward. People are going to be formal and awkward back, but if we’re casual like your casual day, we’re casual casual about fund-raising it’s, easiest, doable people will feel like it’s, not so intimidating to write durney agree, the’s, no way to determine a prospect capacity. I have to say, there is. The weather is so beautiful here. That girl had our doors wide open when i came in and there’s now flying house with helicopter bugging, right, isn’t he had seen it before. Dale has a five. I don’t activate it online, but rob your your helicopter in the background on spray. Ok, um, wait, well, we’re trying to get prospect interest in our organization generally wear and what these questions to ask it’s always nice to have questions if you’re fun, right to ask, how did you come to be a donor? I’d love to hear your story and then they start talking about it and you go tell me more fascinating what happened next, you know? So you’re drawing i from the donor, their story opening, you know, and look, you may have a social service, somebody i was doing a weapon on this topic yesterday, and somebody said, well, we’re we’re not a hospital or university, we are about a women’s shelter. How can we ask today? And this is what you said to a donor then how did you come to be to be a donor to us? Tell me about your interest in domestic violence, you know? And the person can reveal what they want to reveal. I mean, i’ve never been in a battered situation, but i have a deep love and breaking my heart for women who go through that and i want to give to this cause because i believe in it, but no but fundrasing have never asked me why i care about it, you know? And i think we make a big mistake. Fundrasing because donors have a story and they have a passion and they want to like, they want to share it with people, but fund-raising has never asked. So if you wantto determine if your prospects interested or if you want to grow their interests, get them to tell you their story about what, how they’re connected to your organization, there you next-gen yeah, no, really we’re going to clear meyerhoff clarence he’s great, you know, i’m going to live in the studio next friday and we’re talking about donorsearch, torrey, i got you got strategies for getting getting a fine point, getting into details and not wrong, but in those nearly cool detail that makes a story very special daughter story, yes, so wear that. Yeah dankmyer mamatoto fired-up fund-raising go to prospect research guru to and she’s done a lot of weapon or what? That’s what tony luna’s just said hello hey, tony he’s about the pearl s buck foundation oh, cool, really wonderful, wonderful were going to say, i’m sponsoring a child with probono flandez schnoll what will you do the job? Well, they engaged me for board retreat and then for some consulting, and they showed me these pictures literally you can look at a kid and choose to sponsor them, you see their stories, and for thirty dollars a month, you can spot them. And tony luna was dahna webinar on your old movie let tony tony boot just joined on tiny only just joined the literary tony way. We’re doing a weapon on donorsearch shoretz and unneeded, tony, and he told us story and it made me cry, and i went to a website and a and a familiar enough with their work and recited it, and so i’d already been warmed up, so to speak made the commitment, right? Tony, i can’t see your comments anyway, but thanks for joint, you’re amazing fund-raising every donor donor has stories every dahna has the story, so if you’re trying to qualify your donor interesting capacity, you know, and the donor’s story is one way to find out their interest and you can you can ask them also, what else did they give money to or what? What? Not money, but what are their philanthropic? Powerthru e-giving volunteering. What? What else in the community? What other projects and causes are you involved? That’s, huge information. And, you know, sometimes you can say what? Do your top three philanthropic priorities and donors have priorities? They have a mall, a that they got a vision about, what they want accomplish in the world and fund-raising that they’re completely in the door. You suggest a lot of asking. Now i have the other half of that is a lot of listening. How about interfering without pushing what you think the older maybe interested in or what the latest program is that desperately needs funding. Yeah. That’s not where the donor is going. The potential that was going don’t steer them grand simple listening. Right? And we think we gotta have this presentation. We have had a four color brochure. We have that the back-up sheet and the this and the that the power point. And we think we think we’re supposed to go in and, like, sail the donor on some, uh, on something but that’s. Not the way to get money from a donor and get investment. No, you shut up and you ask questions. And you listen, your way to the gift. Listen, wait, get listen your way to get you that way. I have a newsletter by post every friday on my block, and i just posted a lot. My block post this morning was about listening your way to the gift and had to get him how to get an appointment with a major donor is to ask them for advice and let them know they get to do the talking. That was not a very subtle way. Yes, but not total pollution. Well, you know, this is a reference tool way you have to be subtle about promoting your excellent work. Okay, you did mention getting others involved, others who may be able to tell you about people and their willingness to do it. Yeah, you’re a former dancer. Yeah, right. Were you modern or classical high school? And i moved to modern and you didn’t move tomorrow. You do a lot of work with art. Screwed. I did have our background. Do i back? You are due. And i did. And i’m very out of the north among the rolli city arts commission here and i’m attending a lot of art performance. Is all over what happens really? City rights commission when you moved to chapel hill, i’m sure they will have percent i know, like sure that they are going to find another person that people in line politically try to get on that board. Do you find smaller scoops? Trouble identifying here? And we’re talking about several steps to be a terrible to identifying, having a decent prospect type like, well, don’t you think? I mean small art lorts groups they’re usually so see that the pants and so yeah, beautiful, and i love that burning coal theatre is one of my favorites were subscribers there and donors in raleigh, and they have a very skeleton staff, and they really only have an artistic director, and they don’t have the infrastructure to have a real fund-raising off, then it shows, you know? So so what is a small group like that, whether their arts or social service in its hour? Then i would get a grant, whatever their fund, infrastructure capacity building grant from some of these sources around raleigh who would like to see them drugs? Okay, all right goes way beyond raleigh, right? Anybody looking for information that will make us yeah, that building is huge, and you should be at make a big case for it because a lot of donors will give to that if they know you’ve got a strong program that’s well received in the community, and you don’t have a staff to do marketing and fund-raising and and solicitations, i mean, you gotta have that kind of infrastructure either get volunteers to do it. Yeah, because you’re never gonna get it right if i if i could, like, struggle like non-profits you know, you got this one dollar and what do you do with it? You know, do you spend it on your program? You’re feeding hungry children, you’re putting on amazing performances, you got your program area or you invested in infrastructure? What do you do with that dollar? But and everybody wants to put in program, but if you don’t invest in infrastructure, you will never grow up, never grow up. It’s a dilemma? I am, i know that’s a lemon that’s twice the vast majority of non-profits never break having seventy five thousand dollars in annual revenue is something like seventy percent o r understood me very hard, very difficult. But it would help you out. So tips for building your potential donor needs to be accurate. Your boardmember talk about the board get as being potential referrals for people who may be interested in ways we need to but here’s the problem people go, the board members, and they say, give us ten names so we can send solicitation letters to him and the board members going what i don’t want to. I don’t want to hit up my friend and we approach, you know, just like we were approaching donors wrong, we’re approaching boardmember is wrong instead, and you’re going to hear more. You heard from roger craver, what last wednesday attention if you get boardmember that just made thank you phone call and thank you notes, and they’d be host tours for donors and have parties for donors. You will raise more money period on that’s great way to not be off putting to boardmember right, we’re not comfortable, so we’ll be willing to write it down and i’ll sit across from her desk and all i ask for. No, i’m happy to do it because i love the organization and i’m comfortable i’m comfortable losing, yeah. Others need to be more. But dude, you are not. Not so from my about doing a lot of money, bring a network. Not not for immediate solicitation, but bring friend open open door exactly what you said to me over and over. They said if i could just get my board members open doors, that’s all i need them to do is open doors. Uh, and so i tell you, my ports party story because i never say no to a rally story sport right out here on the front porch. Teo so i was a board member of the carolina ballet, and we had a new artistic director who came down from philadelphia. Ricky wise and it’s a boardmember i wanted to open some doors and connect the balance, especially ricky with some key players in the community. So i had a porch party and so interesting on fighting sixty people it’s all about email, and i deliberately invited people that i thought could be helpful to the ballet. You know, very strategic and not a porch has a good reputation for parties so that people like to come to gayle’s house for whatever and of the sixty. People that i invited thirty kane and thirty did not come, so it was like the people who came self-funding people who were not instant did not come. So from a boardmember standpoint, you’re boardmember not tryingto arm twist people, the people that they invite can either come or not. So it’s easy to it’s not so scary for remember so when we had a party and i put on my fund-raising hat and i said to the fundrasing staff said, these are the top three people on my porch. He’s your guy he’s, a venture capitalist and his daughters to ballet and dancer he’s your got screwed, and so i knew what to do for the staff. And so they were like helicopter fundraisers, you know, you’re gently it’s circling, and then you gently glide in when there’s a new opportunity, and he was like, he was really glad to meet them really glad to make ricky really gabby get involved. He became chair of the board and frankly, thank you. Agree. Thank you think he kept the ballet alive for a few years that i’ll have a norman porter under because just open the door, so shall i. Tell boardmember that story, you know, because it doesn’t have to be so scary that you don’t like right ten names down and give it to people we have about a minute before next break, i got a little business but that’s just teeth. The idea of your next you next subtle step, which is touchpoint? Yes. Just give us an overview of that. Well, one should donorsearch qualified for interesting capacity. Your next step is to find out what their hot button for you. So you you want to know their area of interest that your organization okay? And that’s a fun conversation. All right? We’re gonna probe that the hot buttons in just a couple minutes. I have to do a little business. So there’s a lot more on the subtle steps to the ass coming up and you know them. Sponsors of the show. Their latest free content paper is still fresh and very relevant. It is the intelligent fundraisers guide to sustaining. Giving research proves that there is cause and effect between sustaining, giving and dahna retention. I can’t put any simpler, sustained and retained, sustained and retained paper will help you learn the right way. To start your sustaining giving program or expand, it doesn’t matter where you are. You can learn something from this it’s that pursuing dot com you quick resource is then tent papers it’s the intelligent fundraisers guide to sustaining, giving well, make me read it to you i don’t want to spend an hour on non-profit radio reading, get it, get it! We’ll be spelling spelling bees for millennial fund-raising no algebra with natural logs this week. That was that was last week’s show today, just reminding you about this fund. Cool fund-raising night with a spelling bee concert stand up comedy, live music dancing around fund-raising at a local typically they’re like bars and restaurants, but these things are smashes for millennial events. Millennial fund-raising so you check out their video at wi be spelling dotcom cool idea. Now time for tony, take two non-profit radio is now part of stanford social innovation review. I announced that last week, and i’m saying it again because it’s my show and i do what i need to do. I do whatever the hell i need to do twice on stanford social innovation review, because this is really exciting to be on. Such a premier platform. S i r right, you know them. Thank you, big deal. I’ve never made it. The stanford special innovation reviews you have viewed that you at the big kind of hear, well, you’ve been personally for gift, and i have not yet, so check it out, forces a video introducing this whole thing, as it was last week. There’s always video, you know me, you know, this is always going to video. I looked that actually in the video, i look a little fast, very frightening, but look at the video shoot i’m talking about is that tony martignetti dot com, and that is tony, take two. Let’s, go! Ok, let’s, continue. Well, remind people we’re on. We’re on page five that’s the fired-up fund-raising page facebook alive that’s where you’ll find us. There were also on paris. Go the first cop over here on the screen and that’s at tony martignetti my periscope. So join us if you want to check out video. If you’re accustomed to the to the last dream and wanna check out video, find us either of those two patience. Okay, uh, let’s, go back to the little steps yet again. So how do we start to find out what really moves people about our work? Well, that’s it really like that? It’s a really fun conversation first. The first step, of course, with the donor, is to qualify them for interesting capacity. And once you know that your donor is qualified, you know what interests you most about our work. This is not hard to ask. And the initials quite questions to determine interesting capacity. Lots of times you don’t. I will tell you what. There in student in most. But it’s. Really interesting. If you think about, give me a typical number off it. Question paper non-profit up in new york or somewhere like that. Ah, one of my school friends. Ah, historical society. Yeah. Okay. Historical society has got different legs to its case for supporters. Got different areas that people might be interested in. There might be a downtown redevelopment air interest because they’re old has is our facility downtown that they’re working on it? Not for this position, but okay. Could be a historical preservation overall, that way a history, a history aspect, history in communication on and then there may be an education aspect. Then there may be a heritage aspect. Maybe there’s some genealogy issue our ah ah demographic. You know, african american or hispanic or caucasian. You know that you can trace down the lines, and then they’re maybe maybe a furniture. O r ah, a cultural civilization. Maybe the sociology, the way people live because i know that my mother was involved in a plantation historical society. Any short callen and they weren’t. They hit the furniture, and they have african american story. And they had the overall history of the governor stone of north carolina, three organization thinking of alba, the abraham lincoln brigade. Cool. They are memorializing the group of men. Who went from the u s to fight in the spanish civil war against the fascists? Andrea caldnear recalled every home lincoln brigade abraham lincoln gave archives alive by descendants of the brigade members have someone bring you in terms of geology, different askanase history, education, right. Keeping alive memory generally. And so your donor is going to change your donor’s typically interested in one area versus the others or, you know, some donorsearch ascension. Your financials, you know, how do you know how? How are you organizing yourself to make to make a difference? I could have got interesting. Your financial it might be financially oriented person, right? Who’s concerned about your balance sheet? Basically. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you know, like, what should wash your business model. And how can i help you? You know, are you bringing in enough money? And, you know, because i think the business model sometimes is interesting strategic discussion. So my point is you don’t have got different area you. Every organization has got a bunch of different areas that’s going to interest a donor. And so when you say what you just did into that organization till you tell me how you became a donor. Tell me about your experience with our organization. Ah, hospital turns out they’re interested in the maternity stuff. There’s. All this new stuff happening with maturity. My daughter just had a baby in chapel hill a few months ago, and i think, it’s all the stuff you have a lot of movement. Yeah, great. Neo-sage neo-sage s so so, for example, if i were really instant numa attorney stuff and i’m a grandmother. Gosh, well, then i can meet the new attorney. Doctor. I can meet the midwife. I can see. I can confound that stories about patients who’ve had the experience. And maybe i had a really frightening childbirth when i came along. And i have some, you know, lots of times donors have a personal past or something. That something that happened, teo, like i tried to be a ballet dancer. That was happy, you know, or whatever. You know, they had a difficult or somebody and their family did. But use a donor has a deep connection. If you can find that i’ve and so what you’re trying to do is build build upon your donor’s interests. Dahna specific interest area may also be clues in their past e-giving designated just certain programs programs obviously right about move zone, you ask why i you know you’re getting consistently do this, um, to the education component way you are doing well in school. What is it about that way? Is there anything else way we’re interviewing? The donor hyre good? We’re not presenting. We’re not presenting a news programme that has your funny now you told that is not the way to engage a major donor, and also people need to realize, too, that i made major gifts are almost always designated for something. They’re rarely unrestricted unless a donor really believes an unrestricted. You know, when i make my major give sunday in my life, i’m tourney between making an understated to my favorite place or making it for something special. I’m thinking about endowing if i could if i could live down the president’s position, so that would free up money. But i want the president come talk to me every year and tell me what’s going on. You know, some of the donors have conditions, too, and one, i’m talking a little bit on the subject at the at the international conference in san francisco in a couple of weeks, and my colleague who’s presenting with me, she says that one of the things that you need to do in the subtle steps you need to serve donors outrageously, she says she has cooked for donors, she helped them get the right kind of hotel rooms. Her name is ella george paul she’s, a senior director of major gifts at the lineberger cancer center in chapel hill and she’s, brilliant serving orders outrageously, outrageously and and then somebody wrote him e-giving webinar just yesterday, and she said, i’m just a one person shop. How can i do that? This is making me feel overwhelmed, and so i said, pick one donor who has the interest and mega capacity and maybe make it you’re a goal or get a boardmember to help you with, you know, small organizations can use the same strategies you just deal with fewer people don’t sell yourself short pitches, small organization, you have the bandages serve people personally, yeah, outrageously personally latto reservation canopy portfolio is big in our assuming major donors. Yes, no, i’m just no mall shops have a distinct advantage in this pond. The the sort of way just remind you that i’ve had a few years ago, but he played his show once a year. It’s peter shankman and his books his hold tommy boylen, zombie loyalists. I like i get it how to serve people so well, because preserves wise that they are zombies xero donation and they do your pr and marketing in pollution for you that kind of way right on. And he boatinfoworld corporate, but it’s, great lessons, non-profits and we make the point as as i could you lots of times peter and i do that small shops have a distinct advantage in this. You’re not. You are not sure changed and come, you know, under other resource in that respect, in terms of how you can serve people. I think small shops tend to hold themselves a small and sell themselves short with their thinking. Oh, we can’t do that were too small and it’s it’s better to have a possibility thinking rather than the way we can’t do that thing, you know? Tio against anyone that is that it’s negative it’s destructive. Yeah, right. Right. Condoms. Okay, let’s, go, teo, your next step, which is creating some calculation opportunity. Yeah, on what we know about. Yeah. So look for what she qualify your donor for. Interesting, interesting capacity. Next step is found out. They’re hot buttons and then the next step create cultivation experiences for the donor around the area of interest in it. And again, this is all fun stuff, right? It’s not working. It’s. Not hard work for a donor to the interview me before i was fundrasing be interviewing the donor. Found out why they love you and and then help them love yume or about connecting them with interest. And let me just give some examples. All right, tony luna, you hope you’re still listening. You know, i could have the opportunity to i’ve been invited to write to the child i’m sponsoring in the philippines or to hear from his parents. I could if i wanted to learn more about that area of interest, i think it’s a bit painful for me because i know i’m not so sure i want to have direct contact, but i’m really interested in some parts of the pearl buck society work, you know, for, uh, for for hospital again. I was wrong about the maternity ward. You know the incident, the fund-raising it is not a cultivation experience. A series of experience around the interesting experience, you know, the ballet of the theater. You know, the ballet. I’m interested in the parachute. Well, gosh. So give me a son. Pair of posies o got the frame. Um, you know, and and i get the like, why supreme a ballerina warm up, i oh, my god. She’s so beautiful. You go inside and you come to rehearsal. Yeah, maybe a little backstage tour. Your show. Listen, e i hey, i was i was a ballet fan and the valet staff during the nutcracker. They invited me and my daughters and me for a backstage tour during intermission. And there’s a short upon very warming up. I can still remember i’m like i’m about a weep over the beauty. Yeah. And, you know, that’s a donor experience that brings your donordigital and it is so much fun to do and also i want to make a point really important point that donors there’s some studies l b burke’s research says that donors enjoy meeting program here, so, you know, you’ve got non-profit you’ve got all these different people doing the work, people will think that you talk to the program officers every yeah, they come to staff meetings, you seem them always out, feel something, you know, for a owner, or potentially going to be brought in someone out where, on a very special opportunity, a lot of people, because it’s all routine just prevented. Yeah, you office donors, all that love, that stuff. And so again, we’re making fund-raising fun. We’re making fund-raising easy. I call this the sikander easier, gentler and much more successful and much more fun. Way to raise money, waste zaptitude. Stuff that that union, the organization probably take for granted. They’re going to be very, very interesting to your potential boners. Yeah, i think of ah, not ha ve you a patient. The hosts are in the studio every single day is no big deal, but for a donor or a potential to be brought in and you all the sparkling equipment like crashing and the host contracts with the producer get a tour of the studio that you know, it’s something insider that people working at that studio probably take for granted everything that you’re doing and what you’re years ago it was take your daughter to work day when i went to chapel hill and i took my daughter and we got a little tour and we went over to the w unc radio. Oh, and we were playing hall on campus that there was keep what’s, his name broadcasting and there’s keys. I hear mother, right? And and you know, the thing about this kind of saying that’s still remember i longer, but you got the donor, got a picture, got a visual. I’m talking about visual experiences that i had and that is different from words. It’s one thing to use upon right? Just try to tell your story and you could do a great job but give you don’t experience, then you don’t have to do so much work, and the donor has somehow imprints on the donor more than your story alive experience labbate spirit was more vivid than over sure for your story about or even a video don’t just tell your story about workflows thing to do work washing work? Yeah, did he hand on? Yeah, it’s something i’m thinking agriculture, but yeah, something hand on and actually i believe in asking donors that they want a volunteer because studies show there was a big study gosha awhile about this to the eighty, they may be at the bank america high net worth study that said that eighty four percent of high net worth donors and their survey volunteered, and the ones that volunteered more than one hundred dollars, a year gave almost one hundred thousand in the year to their cost. So the more the mohr is a direct correlation between the amount of time you’re dot volunteer spends with you and the gift they’re going to get this really engagement. It’s. Really real engagement. All right, great let’s, break things right. I screw up or break, and when we come back down and i’m going to wrap up with the subtle steps to the ask stay with tom paris cope with clive. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Hi, this is claire meyerhoff from the plan giving agency. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio. Oppcoll welcome back and the irony of jail talking over krauz hyre hope is that they were very good friends. She realized mike was hot and it was a drop playing, but they’re very good backing you mary-jo back and forth. Okay, uh, you know, i don’t know a very good thing going drop for non-profit your way on next week, talking about clolery story’s getting the fine details and at a craft, that story doesn’t have any long to be genuine and heartfelt, and to be a motivating donorsearch story and president about that that’s, right, radio titley, henry norris, you know, totally enjoy hyre she’s, our fired-up fund-raising go to play e-giving favorite person, and she’s, also a buddy of mine, we run, we run around together here in raleigh, is we say, okay, cool she’s gonna miss you when you were a chapel hill, what company are you going? Okay, that’s to spend more time with the with the probation opportunities. Who else could participate? Maybe. Yeah. They’re friends with another potential boner with a small group. Yeah. Uh, noah boardmember remember can be involved in your introduction. Five, because you know well, you know what? When you start designing a cultivation plan, we do something called moves management, and we want to design a new move which is experiences for your donor’s. Step by step. So you could be really creative in your moves. You know, you can invite them. And if they don’t come to the event, you still get credit for the introduction, right? Or for the invitations. You get it, and then you can arrange for them to make your ceo. You can go up the ladder about different people they can meet. You can give them tours and conversations with the program’s staff about the area there incident. Ah, and so you are happy. But the thing is, this is very important to keep this easy to get this to be too social. So you want to try to have meetings with donors rather than visits? This is the new terminology meetings, can we? Have a meeting. And you were that fancy new way? Well, elena, who did not wish and i did this webinar yesterday we’re going to give in san francisco. She has a slot about the old words in the new words. Okay, there’s, the new ready meetings way donorsearch this is more social. A meeting is maybe a little bit more business, like a little bit more transactional because my job is to wear off to our station comes to are we want to use visit but the thing is that, um we don’t want to make it seem to social call way have meeting. We’ll have a little bit zoho waning relevance off my stage three umbrella visit and then within the visit we have meetings with yo. Yeah, program staff and i think as many people as possible. Yeah, maybe these are not all formal meetings, but just like even just an interaction. Just a hello. This is our cfo, but the faint know the fail. Please meet meet, meet our new donor-centric just something breathing. But it comes to the point where you have the sight of the donor. And this valley says this is even in thee, the qualification states, would you? And this is the key question to pop. Would you like to know more about how you could impact this project area? Well, that’s that’s the beginning of the ass that’s. The beginning of the end of the conversation. Thie is the end of the beginning of the steps. Now, in the beginning of the conversation yes, the conversation would you and say this is like how you ask for permission, you know, would you like to know more about how you could impact that toe shoes for the ballerina? Her? Would you like to know more about how you could help historical society with the structure is not right that you’re saying, when you’re calling the meeting there’s gotta be structure to it? Yeah. Purpose, purpose profnet just social right now. Those this ask necessarily happened at on it depends on what the donor’s chaillou maybe no donor might say, oh, my gosh, i’ve been waiting for you to ask me how you know about this question for a long time. I really want to help. Sometimes we’ll sigh that they sometimes will literally said you haven’t you asked the story, you know? On other donors or just your having to educate your donor about they have this met burning interest, they have to pass to the and now you’re saying to them, would you like to know more about how you could help? So if you can’t be a fun right there, we’re not getting that out of your mail. You have to say it, and then the doctor says you have, like no more, and then you could say, well, if you did to choose ever to invest in us or make the gift, you could do this or this is just the kind of thing you might like to explore. So that way, these air subtle step, these little tiny questions, that’s something i’d like to explore is that i’d like to know a little more. Well, let us, uh, come back to you. You back? Well, well, you know, it’s something you’d like to explore and then you know, i wouldn’t i wouldn’t come back to them. I would try to find out more right there on the spot. Would you like to look at the cardiac centre or the maternity ward, for example? Or would you like to tim, to meet ricky are ballet artistic director and hear from him way. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe not, but when the donors, if you say the donor, would you like them or about how could support this project that’s a specific program and then you say, what else would you would you like some options of what you could fund? Would you like to learn? Mohr would you like to meet someone? Uh, um under it kills that my friend in new york city has a story about this thing, the way i loved you are, but but she is the brooklyn i think it was a film group in brooklyn and she’s very involved with the guy came and he said, yeah, liketo, i’d like to support y’all, what can i do? And so they created three different options and one was one hundred thousand and he has one hundred thousand option hyre they’re saying that they think that they think he like a scruffy old guy off the street and lo and behold, never judges your potential. Never, never something conclusive, but not the oppcoll home and you don’t really know you no, but you know something or clues, but, you know, you have a total package, too. Judge well goes on education, but look at the car, look at the car like that. And so the little tiny questions you ask lead, it almost becomes not even ask. Ask it one point because you don’t have to say we were hoping you consider it gift of blah, blah, blah to accomplish blah, blah, blah. Sometimes you don’t even have to do that because this asking conversation so organic would you like them or about how i could support the project? Yeah, i would. Okay. Well, here’s, some ideas, which is the one that you would like? Oh, i would like the scholarships. Tell me more about scholarships and here’s. Some other things you can do. You can sight of a donor when you make the gift to our organization. These kinds of things happen. It has, you know, well know, it’s a process that making give, you know, we have this kind of recognition, and sometimes it takes us a couple of weeks to get it approved because you have a signed agreement. It’s an endowment or scholarship and some donors accused tohave a small recognition of bed or, you know, and you get to meet the blah, blah, blah and and what you’re doing, you’re your visual and i think and helping the dahna visualized and not that it’s, not some mysterious if you’re making a start gift, you know, this is how we walk it through this, how we handle it this time when the sale is made so that you’d not charge any taxes on the appreciation. So all of those things that perfectly permissible to talk about with your donor and they made that the gift more, more realistic, and then another thing you can do this is our thirty seconds. You get a thank you, you tell your daughter what other people have done? Oh, you’re old, you’re part of a community. Yeah, and this dahna gave this and this dahna gave that how you like that affected their great neil perry kottler petal step you’ll find yes, several steps to be asked again. Her book is our fund-raising turned board passion into action, and you will find her and jill perry dot com and also at gail perry and c thank you again so much for having me in your home. Yes, thankyou, thankyou tony it’s so much fun and about a facebook about a periscope next week i’m back in the studio with that. I’ve already said a couple times. Claire meyerhoff she’s, our creative producer and she’s got as i said, donorsearch stories, secrets creative producer to this very show. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling super cool spelling the fundraisers we be spelling dot com creative producer is claire meyerhoff. She’ll be on next week. Sam liebowitz is the line producer up in the studio on west seventy second street, but he mcardle is our am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and this cool music is by scott stein. I don’t hear the music xero with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful posts here’s aria finger, ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you gotta make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe, add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s, why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge. Somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of offline as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for April 7, 2017: The Agitator’s Donor Retention & Your Content Strategy

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Roger Craver: The Agitator’s Donor Retention

Roger Craver is The Agitator and his book is “Retention Fundraising.” He has strategies to help you keep the donors you’ve got. (Originally aired April 10, 2015)

 

 

 

Brett Meyer & Katie Carrus: Your Content Strategy

What should you create for the communications channels where you’re active? How do you stay consistent with your mission? Who’s responsible? Brett Meyer is director of strategy for Think Shout and Katie Carrus is director of online communications at Humane Society Legislative Fund. (Originally aired April 17, 2015)

 


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Hello and welcome tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host i’m going in from emerald isle, north carolina today because the show must go on. We have a listener of the week abila anis, she tweeted. Tony is a snarky host who tells it like it is now what non-profits need to be successful, i would’ve preferred charming or ah charlie rose knockoff would’ve been nice, snarky, probably accurate, but who cares about accuracy? Facts are overrated. She named it best non-profit podcast on her block fact check that is accurate. She’s at abre auctioneer and auctions generosity dot com abila thank you very much for the kind words, but in your block post you could’ve mentioned my youtube channel isn’t mentioned that one it’s really tony martignetti r e a l abila anise congratulations on being our listener of the week oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into noma phobia if you called me with the idea that you missed today’s show the agitators donorsearch retention. Roger craver is the agitator and this book is retention fund-raising yeah, strategies to help you keep the donors. You’ve got that originally aired on april tenth, twenty fifteen and you’re content strategy what should you create for the communications channels where you are active? How do you stay consistent with ambition? Who’s responsible brett mayer is with think shout and katie caress from the humane society just later fundez that originally aired april seventeen twenty, fifteen, twenty two non-profit radio on stanford social innovation review responsive by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers may be a spelling dot com here is roger craver with the agitators donor-centric i’m really glad that roger craver, the agitator is with me. He’s, the agitator at the agitator dot net he’s been shaking things up for a long time in big ways. He helped launch organizations like common cause greenpeace, the national organization for women and amnesty international. Damn that’s impressive. His book is retention fund-raising the new art and science of keeping your donors for life published by emerson and church he’s at roger craver on twitter and right now he’s on non-profit radio welcome, roger craver. Thanks, tony it’s. Great. To be with you, it’s. A pleasure, it’s. A real pleasure to interview the agitator. I love that the agitator that’s cool like, thank you. Did you think about the anarchist? Did you consider that or no it’s? No, i don’t need that much chaos. I think they’re stirring things up in agitating ways. Good. Okay, that’s sufficient? I understand. Um, why was there a need for a book called retention? Fund-raising? Well, for the last ten years, possibly fifteen years american non-profits and european non-profits have been basically losing mohr donors than they’re gaining. And that is that is a real problem, not only for the present, but for the future. The history of fund-raising before then was the donors were fairly easy to come by, and the cost of acquiring them was relatively inexpensive. And so there was a sort of burn and turn mentality. That so what if we lose, the donors will will get new donors and simply replaceable that’s not possible anymore. And so people who are caring about their organizations future need to be caring about holding on to the donors they have. Early in the book, you cite a twenty thirteen a f. P association of fund-raising professional study that says that ah, a few things, but it starts with flat fund-raising every every hundred dollars raised from new donors was offset by one hundred dollars in losses that’s, right? And it got worse. It got worse in two thousand fourteen, it was off by one hundred six dollars really way are going the wrong way. Um, and then also that there was negative growth in the number of donors for every hundred dollars for every hundred donors acquired, one hundred seven were lost. That’s, right, that’s, right. Pretty a pretty frightening statistic when you couple that with the fact that the number of non-profit has grown enormously in the last thirty years. It’s grown from about six hundred thousand to a million. Five hundred thousand non-profits so many more non-profits chasing far fewer donors. That, in essence, is the problem. And why retention is so important, many more charities chasing many fewer donors. Right? Alright, so that is clearly unsustainable. Um, all right. So what we gonna do about this? Well, that’s, what i asked myself after after watching these statistics for a long time, i decided there there really has to. Be it empirical way too find out why donors leave on what we can do to keep them in the bowl. Yes, the study and so we set out to do and did a two year study of two hundred fifty non-profits in the united states and in the united kingdom and survey tens of thousands of donors to determine why they leave, and then what steps on organization could take to hold on to them? And that it is the findings from that study that i’ve been encapsulated in this, uh, in this book, along with some quite practical suggestions on what organizations khun due to stem this hemorrhaging, we’re going to get to those because that you call them retention winds. Um ah, finger pointing is not particularly valuable, but i’d like to do some anyway. My show, we’re going to do whatever the hell i want. Where do you think that? How do you think this problem arose? This lays a fair, lackadaisical attitude about how we treat our donors and doesn’t matter. We lose, some will gain more back where does the fault line you think? Well, it arose from the days when it was so easy and inexpensive, too acquire donors and at a time when direct response became very popular way of acquiring donors, and so they the mindset became sort of it’s it’s easier to sign the purchase order for direct mail lists and printing than it is to really worry about how to take care. I don’t owe rather casual, okay, so we consign this purchase order for an acquisition, mailing campaign or whatever, whatever channel we use acquisition, campaign and that’s easier than being interested, active and evaluating and then improving the way we treat our donors exactly, because the the reality is that treating a donor well takes thought takes work, takes planning and, uh, takes the willingness to build a relationship between the organization and the donor and that that involves a lot more than simply mailing a letter or making a phone call. And i love that we’re talking to someone who has studied this problem. I noticed a non-profit radio last couple of weeks, i’ve been saying introspection a lot this, but it just seems to be coming up with a number of guests that non-profits need to be introspective about whatever whatever subject we’re talking about. This there’s not enough it’s critical self evaluation? No, there isn’t. And one of the one of the reasons for that there’s a there’s a so called where there’s a horrible jargon term called brett best practice. Okay, what in the earth best practices are? I don’t know and i’ve been doing this for fifty years, but people latch onto that term and they most often compare their organization with other organisations and say, well, if we’re we’re doing about as well as the other other guy, so we must be using best practices but that, you know, there’s, no interest, thie other the other organization might be doing it badly. You can’t you can’t just say that we were consistent with others they maybe, maybe underachievers. And by the way, we have non-profit radio we have george in jail, but best practices has been used so often that i’m not even sure that’s jargon anymore. It’s dahna it’s more like cliche, but we should send send you do instead of jargon jail within you teo ilsen ugo cliche camp union are you near an airport? There’s a jets taking a knife in your back about thirty miles away but one just came over, so okay, well, maybe we’re being a zombie that kept going. It didn’t stop, right? Okay, we would’ve heard it if it stopped. All right. So we’ll put you in cliche camp, which doesn’t sound that bad joke. It’s like for minor offenders. That’s a juvenile would be in there that trade. I don’t use it. No, i don’t think there is such a thing is best practice. And i’ve been hearing state of the art a lot too. Maybe that’s replacing best practices, but there’s, just a substitution. All right, spare us and thought thought leadership we could we could talk all day about jargon jail don’t leadership. Yes, i know there’s a lot of it in non-profits and that’s. Why? Non-profit right there has drug in jail. Sometimes i let offenders off easy and other times probation is it’s harder to come by. All right, we’re gonna go out for a break. And when roger and i come back, we’ve got a good amount of time. We’re going to talk about ah, some of these retention wins that are easy to do and and had a help you build trust with your current existing donors so they don’t depart, stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent we’re pre recorded this week. I’m sorry, i can’t send ah town and city live listener love but you know that i love are live listeners so that’s out to each of you listening live podcast pleasantries those on the time shift, wherever you are, whatever device whatever time. Whenever however many days or weeks later, you listen to non-profit medio pleasantries to you and never forget our affiliates. Very important affiliate affection out to each of our affiliates throughout the country non-profit radio was hurt. Okay, roger craver. Now, how can we be sure that these retention winds are not cloaked? Best practices? Well, so he could be sure based on empirical data as measured from the responses of ah, thousands and thousands of donors. There’s. No conjecture here on my part. You know, there’s there’s, lots of so called best practices dahna where the people say, well, you know, you ought to print your thank you notes on a very high quality paper. Or you ought to get him out within twenty four hours. Or you need tio send x number of cultivation pieces with no. Asks and all that, of course, is is pure tribal wisdom, so our best practice, whatever you want to call it. So here we wait. In this study, we measured what people care most about and what they don’t care about and put it in priority order according to their responses, and came up with a way of the of isolating the seven drivers duitz that make for retention or flipside of retention of courses is attrition. And, you know, tony, all all of this is really based on apart from our empirical data there’s a lot of common sense here, but common sense, it turns out, is a fairly rare commodity. Ah, the business of building relationships, which is what donorsearch tension is all about is based on two, two things consistency and reliability. None of this, uh, listening to this program have serious personal relationships that don’t have an element of substantial element of consistency and reliability. If i if i say to my spouse, i’m i’m going to meet you at seven thirty, and i’m persistently, uh, late or early or inconsistent with that. That relationship is not goingto laugh the same the same when it comes. To your have you been talking to my wife? You’re describing my marriage? Let’s, let’s keep personalities and personal lives out of this, shall we? Alright? Well, people just translated into into the non-profit world if i if i receive a on appeal a prospect appeal let’s, say from from an animal organization and it talks about rescuing puppies and cat and i send them a contribution. And the next thing i know, i get an acknowledgement letter about the oceans and let’s save some whales that is not consistent, and i will not likely be back to that organization with another gift or if they send that acknowledgement letter and it says roger carver instead of roger craver call their their help line, and i get a rather surly or non carrying clerk, and he says, well, i may try to get to it as soon as i can and isn’t very helpful. I’m not going to go back with another gift because that’s an unreliable organization, so we have to understand that relationships are built on trust and the two pillars of trust or consistency and reliability, and therein lies the key to retention because it leads to the next element of of retention, which is understanding the donors, the importance of the donors attitude, you know, it’s it’s, not it’s, not the donors behaviour that we should be concerned about behavior in the sense of transactions giving money or not giving yeah, donors attitude that we need to care about because the organization dahna determines what that attitude is going to be by the organization’s action. Yeah, when you use organization is doing things that affect the donor positively, then the donor’s attitude will lead to behaviour that makes transaction increases the size of a gift renews the membership, whatever, whatever the desired outcome. But it’s, not the donor per se that is to blame are not to blame. It is the organization’s action that determined how that donor feels about the organizations have something that folks really need to understand if they’re serious about donor-centric we’re also talking about perception, right? How do they perceive? Perceive your organization? Is it professional? Does it care about me as a donor? Aside from all the programmatic important work that it’s doing? But how does it treat our relationship that’s, right? And that that tony that is paramount in ah, donors, psyche, no, they people hyre non-profits to do a variety of of a number of jobs sometimes is to make them feel good sometimes it’s, to enable them to be able to tell their peer group that they’re doing this or that sometimes it’s, because they want to do a specific thing, but very seldom is what is that what the organization claims that is in their appeals? Many people really don’t care that you have ten regional offices or that your ceo has appeared six times in the new york times? None none of that is important. Yet organizations just love talking about themselves, and nothing is more deadly and building a donor relationship that let’s move into these retention winds, which i’ll remind people are just reiterate these air based on empirical study, not not conventional wisdom or would just tribal wisdom that has been repeated at conference after conference. Just because one organization does it a certain way and they’ve been successful doesn’t mean that that’s going to be successful universally it’s not really lesson that’s amore that’s an anecdote? Um okay, hyre you like saying thank you? That sounds pretty simple. Why does it? Why does this need to be? Why does need to be said? Well, it needs to be said because sixty four percent of american non-profits don’t bother thanking their donors. We could start, we can start right there two thirds to two thirds of gifts or not not acknowledged and thanked you’re saying are not are not acknowledged or thank some. Some of that two thirds is acknowledged the sense of a tax receipt, but a tax receipt doesn’t go very far to build it toward building a personal relationship. That’s cold? Yeah, yeah, patane has retained this receipt for your tax advisers evaluation? Yeah, exactly, exactly so they the importance of a thank you is that it is the it is an initial step in building a relationship on we’ve learned a couple things through this study that that air quite important one is it needs to be personal, and by that i don’t mean personalized i mean, personal sounding and warm, warm of heart and meaningful to the donor not necessarily long, but it really has to be real, not we’re. We’re so happy to have received your twenty five dollars, gift, it will be put to immediate ineffective use sincerely, x y z. That is not a that is not a thank you. Rather it is. Dear tony, your check arrived. I can’t tell you how happy it’s going to make sammy who tomorrow will have not only a meal, but he will have a toy for christmas on dh so forth so it needs it really needs to connect the donor to the organization and the donor’s gift to a beneficiary in a real sense of the of the word, something as something way before you get timely there’s no automatic rule that it has to go out within twenty four hours, but it should go out promptly after receipt of the gift. Because we in the studies we we’ve done the preferential time is forty eight hours, but donors of forgiving of taking longer than that what they’re not forgiving of are these form printed, impersonal, thank you’s that just ring ring hollow. So that’s that’s the importance of saying thank you? One of the things you mentioned that i want to emphasize is that the thank you doesn’t have to be long? It doesn’t. I’ve heard this and said it many times on the show i heard it from guests. To be genuine and sincere does not require something long. No, i mean, i love you. If it’s if it’s said in a heartfelt way three words that’s an awful lot to a relationship. That’s your right. That’s it that’s an outstanding analogy. All right. Oh, and the book points out that there’s, um, resource is available around. Thank you’s. You have. Ah, there’s a thank you letter clinic at sophie, which is the showcase of fund-raising inspiration and innovation and your vory thoughtful to point out that people can lift thank you letter ideas from there, but not copy and paste. No, not copy and face. But take, uh, lisa sergeant has put that together and done a terrific job, and she she has an attic full of ah, wonderful. Thank you. Uh, campaigns in there and get inspired by it. And by all means use that. You know, shaul had a saying the mediocre borrow genius steals and there’s. Lots of good stuff on sophie that’s that’s worth looking at that will give you ideas. And this thank you. Clinic is certainly one of them. All right. Mediocre borrow and the genius steals. I’m in the wrong business. We gotta transcend the law’s a little more often, but there we go. You want us to be boring? What do you mean what’s behind that? Be boring. Let’s go back to the to the term consistency, one of the one of the realities of painful realities among most non-profits is they get tired of their of their same message, and as a result, because they’re bored. Uh, they they hyre another copy writer or the same copywriter and say let’s, let’s do something fancy or something that glows in the dark. Something different, something exciting? Well, that is that is not only a horrible waste of time and money. It’s also destructive of relationships, consistency is important and that’s what i mean by be boring. You may be tired of the same message you, mr or mrs organization of same message, but the donor isn’t tired of the same message. They they joined for that reason and they want to stay involved for that reason, so be consistent. That doesn’t mean you have to copy this same thing every time, but stay on the same themes that have produced the donor in the first place and the same the same way a good politician will give the same stump speech over and over again. She may be absolutely sick and tired of it, and the press may be sick and tired of it, and her staff may be sick and tired of it. But it is a speech that works with don’t with the voters, and it has to be given over and over again. You have a background in political consulting, too, don’t you? Yes, ideo i, uh, did a lot of work for twenty years for a number of democratic senators, presidential candidates in the course, citizen advocacy, the work for groups like greenpeace, the seal, you and others that’s all tied to politics. You’ve been around, you’ve been doing this a long time. Did you say fifty years earlier? I believe just, yeah, i’m probably older than most of the trees you’re looking at. Well, i’m in new york, so thie average tree life in new york is, i think, seven years, the street trees. So you got you got those. You got those covered, but all right, you’ve been around it. I’m in i admire its wisdom, its wisdom coming let’s. Imperially no! It’s, empirical. Wisdom it’s not anecdotal. Here’s what’s worked for me in my client’s through the decades. Okay, you want to listen to donors, don’t you? Absolutely. And here here is on area that organizations can really score against the competition and can also help themselves because very few folks in the nonprofit world design effort to get the feedback from their donors. You know, the court corporate america spends billions of dollars getting feedback. If you go on an airline, get off that airline the next day you get a survey you goto to ah, hotel, the next day you get a survey after you’ve checked out my heavens, even ihop, it doesn’t survey on the back of the receipts from their breakfast, and the reason they do this is they know that it, uh, that asking for people’s opinion build satisfaction and builds loyalty, and it is so easy to do, and it is so inexpensive to do, but most non-profits don’t do it, and they just keep the mute button on rather than listen to their donors. But by having feedback mechanisms, you can find out that your website, uh, sucks when it comes to the donate page or you can find out that you’re donorsearch vis program isn’t good, and these these feedback mechanisms are there basically widgets that you’ve been put on your website or questions you can put in your direct mail? Andi, uh, get get the donor’s opinion and, you know, twenty one one of the thing on that you don’t have to necessarily get a written response or telephone response from a donor zamir act repeat, the mere act of asking for someone’s opinion and feedback will boost retention by thirty percent. That is a significant difference. Roger, we have teo to start to wrap up. We just have about thirty seconds left, and, uh, i want listeners, of course, to know there are many more retention winds in the book retention fund-raising published by emerson and church, roger, just spend a couple seconds. Small and midsize shops have a big advantage here, don’t they? They absolutely do. And i love your your slogan for the other ninety five percent because they have a huge advantage because they can do things personally and a well run non-profit shop that pays attention to its donors will exceed return on investment by by five to ten. Times higher than the big organization. Roger craver, he’s, the agitator, to find him at the agitator dot net, and at roger craver on twitter. Roger, thank you so much for sharing all that empirical wisdom. It’s. My pleasure, and i join chelsea and your fan club. Thank you, cool, write something nice, and i’ll make you a listener of the week. Thank you again. You’re content. Strategy is coming up first. Pursuant, they have a free content paper for you. Intelligent fundraisers guide to sustaining e-giving so its forces um, intelligent. You got that? You listen to non-profit radio done fundraiser, you’re you’re either doing it frontline or you’re probably involved in it in some respect. It’s, not you, khun fast forward guide who doesn’t need a guide ever needs guidance in life and sustaining e-giving the research proves that there is a cause and effect relationship between sustaining giving and donor retention wolber roger and i just talking about you need to raise more money. You need to keep your donors that terrible attrition rate. Get it down what you waiting for? Help yourself you can learn the right way to do sustaining giving notice i did not say best practices, you’ll find this content paper. The intelligent fundraisers guide to sustaining e-giving at pursuing dot com quick re sources and content papers couldn’t be simpler. You read the paper to you and don’t make me do it. You want to be with you for an hour, go to pursue it. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for millennial fund-raising it’s a game show. Fundraiser reminds me of the gun show actually, the host chuck barris just died like a week or ten days ago gong show had the unknown comic so does we’ve been telling the got comics gene gene, the dancing machine we’d be spelling has dancing dahna show had a live band there’s live music and we’d be spelling parallels amazing between the gun show it’s the gong show plus spelling equals we’ll be spelling so you so the gun show equals we be spelling minus spelling is when you move it over, you gotta change the sign you could solve for spelling. Spelling equals the gun show minus we’ll be spelling everything else can be derived. Andi, i’m not sure about the natural log with the natural log of we’d be spelling is the video nonetheless is at we be spelling dot com natural log of we be spelling now. Time for tony’s take two non-profit video we’re on stanford social innovation review we are a podcast. Yes, sir. At s i r dot org’s now you don’t personally need this because you’re listening live or podcast or affiliate, but for everybody else, the ones who haven’t yet been born. Into the non-profit radio family, those sheep without a flock fighters without a formation, the fords without a fleet, they are the ones who confined us on stanford social innovation review check out my video that makes two videos for you to watch overviewing paying attention taking notes in my video the random dude in alexandria, virginia, signals excitement about this announcement and i look fat. We’ll find that video at twenty martignetti dot com and that is tony, take two here are bret meyer and katie caress with your content strategy welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference two thousand fifteen it’s hosted by antenna non-profit technology network. We’re in austin, texas, at the convention center. My guest is katie caress she’s, director of online communications for humane society legislative fund. Katie welcome. Thank you so much for having me. That’s. A pleasure. Thanks for taking time on a busy conference. Your workshop topic is content strategy one or one. What are non-profits not doing so well? I could do better at around their content. Strategy. Well, about everybody here has the intention to do much better. I think that everyone here probably is. Looking for something like content, strategy and it’s, just a matter of kind of getting their leaders, the executives onboarding really what it does is it applies like intention and focus to all of your messaging. It’s. A basic plan r the idea that your messages need a plan. A plan focused plan strategy. Yeah, sounds like it starts with goals. Yeah, it starts with goals. It’s just a good idea to start with making sure that you understand oh, yeah, making sure that you understand what your business goals are and discovering how your channel usually is websites with content strategy, but it could be anything social email, whatever making sure that those platforms have goals that are tighter business schools. So you’re avoiding this kind of like sprawl and all over nests of what happens with web sites a lot of time, and the ad hoc put this up things to be just has to go, like, right now, right? I’m taking it that could come from a ceo or a boardmember yeah, and is there someone else senior and becomes hard to say? No, exactly, exactly, and i think that a lot of people who were working on websites or other channels just kind of feel like they’re in this quagmire, right there just likes just drowning and content, and they don’t have the tools to kind of push back or, you know, carve out a better way. So what this says it’s, like we acknowledge that you’re in this like situation where you’re getting input from stakeholders who had all kinds of varying degrees of a definition of what the website is for what this content is supposed to do so content strategy says everybody from their own perspective. Everyone have no perspective, their own priorities, different audiences, and you end up with this website that kind of like pleases nobody, right? It doesn’t drive your business goals, so content strategy says let’s. Ask the question of why, before we do anything and i think that’s kind of revolutionary who worked on the web even the past, like ten years. It’s it’s, just this race to the bottom, like what you said, like publish all the things now, and this has kind of slow down let’s have a plan and it ends up like driving engagement, and it improves your brand it, you know, drives up, conversions, everything if you can kind of get the buy-in take a beat and pursue this, ok, where should we start our conversation? That was great over that was excellent. Overviewing thank you. Should we get started? Well, you should get started by, you know, finding some similarly minded colleagues, right? So talk to your team members about this current problem. Probably everybody started talking about. It i’m sure they are, right. So talk to him about this this, you know, notion that people are pursuing get the, you know, good kind of the buy-in from your colleagues and then start reaching out to people who are, you know, a little above you who could be an ambassador for you to senior leadership and work on getting that buy-in from those folks and then you just start by what you’re basically telling them or trying to get them on board with we need to be more strategic about this. Yeah. Here, our problems. Yes. And here’s, what are potential outcomes are yeah, if we can be a lot more sophisticated about, like here’s, why we’re drowning, right? He’s? All right. Driving here’s where our pages aren’t really converting people here’s why they’re not performing the way we want them go and you don’t even, like start with your business goal and then you pursue it audit we got a big hump dahna okay, just went away. Okay? Great. What that was that was the with speakers. The thie non-profit radio sound system. A cz exemplary it’s beyond question. So that came from the austin convention center. I wish i could run, i could run this convention of the way we run non-profit really agree? I don’t know these losers here. Well, yeah, but so one of the great first step to take us to get an audit done, right? And so it’s an inventory of all of your content, but then it’s the audit phase, which you’re you know, you’re evaluating page by page, and for some people, this could be like tens of thousands of pages on their website, right? Or it’s a couple hundred, you’re evaluating page by page and determining whether that content a piece of content actually lines with what everybody says your business goals are it’s a pretty serious audit? Now you gotta look at every page, every page, and obviously, if you have hundreds of thousands of pages, or if you’re, you know, a merchant’s site you’re going, you’re going to do like a sample size of those pages, right? You’re the idea is to just see, really, hell, well, you’re you’re content is performing and a lot of times that drives a conversation that drives, you know, that gives you the ammunition to make the case that we need. To make a change so an audit is key. It’s the first place to start, and then you’re pursuing just getting that content landscape kind of sketched out determining what you’re ecosystem is right. So let’s say, you’ve got like, you know, thirty things the organization works on for non-profit you’re gonna have all kinds of things somebody’s working on. So you get the executives and the subject experts to agree? Like what? Our priorities right where the organization’s priorities get really clear on that? And then look at how those priorities and those areas are kind of developed on your site. Do you have one thing that’s like this really, really weird offshoot thing? Just like favorite thing, and you have, like, forty thousand pages on it. This should all be driven by the mission. Yeah, exactly. I already should be pretty clear. Yeah, and flow very yeah, smooth from your your mission statement. Yeah, but what you’ll find. But i think a lot of non-profit especially large ones like, oh, my gosh, there’s there’s competing goals were competing priorities and competing interpretations of what that mission is all across organization, which leaves just, you know, a lot of strife in a lot of tension for folks who are, like, right in the middle of that content production system like the web editors. So, yeah, the idea is to kind of, like, sketch out what your content ecosystem should be. So if our priority right here is, like farm animal welfare, we we should have, like, the depth of that contact your sights to reflect that, and it should also reflect what the current priorities are and the tone that you should using, etcetera. But if you have something that’s just, like, really, really low priority, it doesn’t make sense for that to have, you know, take up twenty percent of the site and you’ll find that that happens a lot of times, so okay, okay, so we were going to get some early stakeholders summerlee allies engaged with us? Yeah, who then starts to develop the content strategy. So, you know, you may have someone who is a content strategist on your team, like, if so lucky you a lot of places, all right, let’s assume not. Our audience is small and midsize. Non-profit yeah, exactly, i know and i’m from a huge non-profit and we don’t have anything like that, so usually this falls on the shoulders of, you know that editorial director of a website or, you know, a director of any filler online platforms and usually going to fall on them, and it doesn’t have to be like we’re going to do all of this right now. It can be baby steps. It can be like let’s just take on one like many project and apply content strategy to it, like run that through that screen, kind of demonstrate successive that way, teo to your stakeholders and say, look how well this worked. Look how we drove results this way by applying attention and focus to this, and then you could move on to a larger things, but it always usually kind of just germinates from the web team, maybe someone else, depending on how the organisation structure and maybe someone like development or design. Everybody has a part in this, but yeah. Then it just gets not only getting the work done and turning your website. Are you platform into what you wanted to be? Okay, uh, that all sounds very simple, but there’s gotta be more to it. And we got plenty of time to spend together. So where where do we go now? Well, i mean, yeah, gosh, so it starts with the audit, you know, and you’re looking into how your, how your pages map to your goals and everything, and then you might start with, like, a section of the website, maybe a section that you i feel like the stakeholders there are going to be easy to work with, and they’re going to, like, excited about the process, and so you might start with that that that section that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, but very good to make it explicit. You got some of those early allies tell me some of their content is the place to start, you know, and don’t start with someone who are a section of your organization who, you know, it’s been kind of contentious to work with them, and a lot of people talk about how content started she’s about like therapy, right? It’s like all these relationships, because content is so personal, there’s so many people who were owning content across the organization and to them that that page that they wrote on, like horse immuno contraception is think their baby right? Like, okay, well, this makes no sense to an audience. This makes no sense to a user, how are they going to do that? So a lot of this kind of, you know, revision, work or whatever is collaborative, and you’re getting people on those teams who contribute to content and you’re all coming to a consensus on, like, what it should be based on, like what? We’ve all agreed on the goals, and we’ve all agreed on the audience, like, how can we change? And sometimes you get them involved in writing new stuff? It all depends on kind of the scope of the organization and how involved everybody wants to be, but it should be a collaborative process, and it could be merely taking, like, five pages that you took out from the audit and saying, like, okay, well, these pages are they really working for us? And so you get them involved in that early early stages so they can kind of see it don’t feel like they’re being put upon, right? A lot of this is relationship management, and so, yeah, you may take five pages and two of them make the cut on. The new site, but you’ve all worked on that together. Three the me decide to retire or, you know, you can, you know, contingency of planet, right? Like have a couple of bourbons on any composed it, but the whole thing should be collaborates. You have everybody going on the same page from beginning tend so we should be thinking also about our audiences. That’s, right, who’s, who’s consuming this content, right and so that’s. One of the first things you develop as your, you know, working on your goal, you’re also thinking about your audience. And so anybody who’s working in a content strategy, capacity and organizations should be talking a lot, teo, all the stakeholders throughout the organization who are touching that content, right? So my job would be to go to that horse. Amina contraception page owner i mean, like, why is this important to you? Tell me how to use this in your work. Would you really, really want to see this? And what do you want them to do with it on? Don’t get a lot of really, really good information out of that. It sometimes turns out to be less contentious than you may. Have thought it wass right? You’ll discover that like, oh, actually, they’re you know, they’re worked requires something different, and now i can pitch something different to them that’s more useful than like this page on the website that i’ve seen has gotten like twenty, views and past year and so it’s, just a lot of lot of talking relationship management. Um, and then once you’ve got kind of i guess that section worked on or even the whole site, then you just move on to a governance situation and actually see bret coming right here. Maybe he wants to speak on governance. Governance is actually brett’s section right? Red, you better hurry up, man. Come on. Get in here. Brett, please get in here quickly. Cause we just transition to your section. Take your lanyard off, please. Red came in late, but we can accommodate him. And actually, we were just getting to the section on governance, governance. So please put on your headset because you’ll hear a lot better and filter out background noise. And wes is going to bring you into the picture. We got everybody, wes. Alright, outstanding. Welcome. Thank you. Okay, this is brett brett. Brett meyer, content strategist for think shout welcome, welcome to non-profit radio thank you. Coming closer to the microphone, please should be within an inch. All right, excellent kitty was doing an excellent job. Hopefully you were going to join us, but we would have gone ahead without you. So i don’t want you to think that you are indispensable. Great, but you did show up at the exact right time is very good timing if you’re going to be late was perfect great governance, governance around our our content strategy what what does? What does that even mean? The governance of it governance is the plan for the plan. There are a lot of non-profits these days who are under the impression that they need to create as much content as possible, which is kind of the opposite of having a strategy so governance helps you plan who is responsible for what so you’re going to have probably a team of writers. Is that team of writers going to be able to publish content directly to the website themselves, or is it going to go through a review process? The whole thing around governance is making sure that people understand what their roles are, and setting up the map for how content is going to move from creation through publication to the public. Okay, and as we are, these are these are written this’s, a written plan, this government’s plan. Ideally, it is going to be written down. Usually it is more of a word of mouth thing, and people just have a general idea of what their roles are. We always advised that there is that kind of written plan or map of how things work, because people leave and new people come in. And if you don’t have that documentation for how things were supposed to work, it takes them a long time to get back up to speed. Buy-in like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they are levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Duitz lively conversation. Top trends. Sound advice, that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio and i’m gale bauer from sponsorship strategist. Dot com. Let’s, go into a lot more detail way got some time left together. What what elements you like to see in in the government governance plan let’s take the idea where it is, it is written. Yes, we try to make sure that things aren’t just happening in the communications department because everybody’s going to have some sort of content that they want to get on the website snd we talked about getting the early buy-in great. So yeah, it’s it’s kind of along the lines of a cross functional team, you have to identify who the best writers are the people who are going to create content that’s going to have meaning for the users who were coming to the website and just generally making sure that they understand what their roles are, who is going to be creating the content who’s going to be editing the content? If you have that kind of evergreen content, they stuff that is going to be kind of a permanent fixture of the website. How often are you going to go back and take a look at that content again to make sure that it is meeting the needs of the organization? Isn’t performing as well as it should be, so part of the governance is also understanding what the metrics for success are and the metro for success are going to be a lot different for the about the organisation information than it would be for, say, the blawg or if they’re doing events. An event is a very time box thing it’s going to have a ramp up, they’re going to be pushing a lot of content or information around the event, but as soon as the event is past that usually doesn’t have a lot of utility as opposed to maybe some of the about us content you want to get across what the goals of the organization is, what the organization does. You want people to really understand what this non-profit is trying to accomplish very important content, so they need to keep coming back and making sure that it’s working, writing down the goals means that they have something to measure against and they’re not just creating content in the dark. Katie, i see you doing a lot of nodding, but there’s things you like to add, i mean, the only thing i would add to that. I’m sure brett nose like you would think really addresses the idea that content is like a living, breathing thing, right? The website this is living, breathing thing it’s very different than an email that you sent out to your list, you know it has to it’s up there all the time. And so what? Brett’s talking about it’s so critical, teo to know that it’s not enough just when you hit publish, you know it’s not like a print magazine. It’s not like an email, he just sent out not even like log, you know, so that’s just the beginning when you hit publish and so this governance is so, so critical to making sure content is still performing, you know, a year from now or that you that you remember that it’s up thinks a lot of times you have a huge website, people were like, oh, that that page? Yeah, it happens to people who are, like, really deeply invested as well. It’s just e-giving huge websites going to it’s going to take over if you don’t govern it let’s spend a good amount of time talking about the measurement and the success metrics go ahead, that’s. Your that’s, your area? Excellent, yes, hyre we’ve been doing a lot of data with our cloudgood data work with our clients recently, so we know for a fact that the home page is not the common way that people come into a website anymore. They’re using google, they’re coming in deep in into the site, through social media or through what’s called dark social, the people chatting each other links buy-in on stuff that can’t really be tracked. So you have to understand that any page of your website might be creating the that first impression for folks, but the goals of the various types of content that you might have on your website are going to be different. So when we do work with clients, we try to help them understand that an event page, a page that somebody might google for. Oh, amplify austin, for example, what? We don’t know exactly what page they’re going to come into at first, but as the data starts to come in, you can see where they’re entering the site and you can help. You can come up with the metrics that are going to let you know whether or not that paige is successful, so if you’re coming into an event page with the registration, you want them to get the information about the event very quickly and decide whether or not they want to attend, and the next step from that would be clicking on the register button, which would be very different from a post on a blogger where you want them to consume the content and then probably share it. So the metrics there going to be slightly different. The important part is to recognize all the types of content and set up the different metrics that will indicate success for that particular organization, because it’s always going to be different, okay? And katie, we were using the interesting example of the equine immuno contraception paige thank, which could be a coin acquaint, contra or something? Yeah, i mean that that was so it was so benefit from governance. I would just so benefit from having those questions asked. Like, what does it mean for this page to succeed? What do you want your users to do with it? And then really, really, like, trail down and see if that’s happening. And i think that that could take care of so much like problem content on so many people’s websites if you’re just sticking to you, like, really direct, objective measurement and then there’s kind of you take away all the, like the sensitivity with that, like, okay, here’s this thing that i didn’t say like, you know, google said it, whatever. Yeah, we still have several minutes left together. What have we not talked about? Whatever i ask you that that you want to share. I like to, and i know that katie agrees with this because we’ve talked about it a little bit. Make sure that non-profits understand that content strategy doesn’t have to be just about the website, and it shouldn’t just be in the commune educations depart multi-channel it is multi channel and the development, the people in the development department who are sending out fund-raising letters that is a piece of content that is going to create an impression and if any one of these things is a little bit off message, i mean, we don’t want to get too far into the whole whole branding part. But if anything’s too far off message or strikes a wrong note with the supporters, you’re probably going to lose thumb, at least in the short term. I’m so glad you brought that up exactly whenever i’ve talked about content started, you know, a lot of people think like, oh that’s, just for websites and even this idea that content is only on a website and just like no like a tweet is content any you know, period it’s, certain pages, that’s, all content that’s why i get so excited about this top because i really feel like it has, you know, with the ability to bring everything together and it can get kind of as big as you want it to be. But that’s what that’s? Why it’s so cool? And the best organizations i’ve seen are the ones who are integrating every single channel into their content strategy and all just completely flows the same ethics the same style, same telling the same priorities and goals and audiences, they’re just really, really woven and deeply, inappropriately and it’s just like it’s cake. I love it. Brett katie knight a zai mentioned, talked about getting some allies early on and then maybe developing a mini project around some of their contents. Do you have? Any other ideas you want to add about trying to get this this team buy-in whether it’s in the early stage or or in the later stages, maybe some, maybe some departments are not as willing as others. What advice do you have there? Katie is absolutely right getting that early win always going to be important because then you’d demonstrate the success or what you can possibly achieve by having a written content strategy other than that getting that leadership buy-in early is it’s not just from the team that you’re assembling, that that’s going to be creating the content. Leadership really has to support this and understand the value they already understand the value, because we’ve been talking about branding at the non-profit technology conference for a long time, there’s a lot of companies who’ve been helping non-profits developed this brand, but the content that is sporting the brand has to be taken into account too. So it’s not a big step for leadership to take, from supporting the brand to supporting the content that is supporting the brand. Yeah, like there’s, so much overlap with just brand and content strategy is the time o que onda geun this all all flows from our mission statement, so that seems like the place to start. Katie and i did talk about that anything you want to add about that non-profits have a built in advantage. They don’t have to worry about what the for-profit companies do because everything should be coming out of their mission and their values when your values driven organization it’s much easier to develop content that has meaning than, say, one, a big company that wants to sell you shoes and thinks that a good way to do that is by showing people succeeding let’s, leave it there, all right? Brett meyer is content strategist with think shout and katie caress, director of online communications for the humane society legislative fund. Brett carry katy, thank you very much. Thinking having real pleasure. Thankyou. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen austin, texas, thanks so much for being with us next week. Gail perry returns. She was just on for god’s sake, but she’s so good i’m having her back, i’m going to drive to her home in raleigh, north carolina, on we’re going to do facebook live and periscope kapin what did britain, katie just say? Be multi-channel we’ll talk about subtle to the ass. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we be spelling dot com creative producer is quite my off. That lever, which is a line producer. Jenny mccardle is r e m and f m l reach director. To show social media is by susan chavez. And our music is by scott stein. You’re with me next week for not probably radio. Big non-profit ideas for the either ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful posts here’s aria finger, ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you got to make it fun applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for March 31, 2017: Who Needs Campaign Counsel

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Peter Panepento: Who Needs Campaign Counsel

Peter Panepento walks us through his report, “The Do-It-Yourself Fundraising Handbook.” Self-funding campaigns are rampant and Peter reveals how to do yours smartly. He’s a consultant and author of the report. (Originally aired September 2, 2016)

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d come down with distant my assis if you dared to infect me with the idea that you missed today’s show, who needs campaign counsel? Peter panepento walks us through his report do-it-yourself fund-raising handbook self-funding campaigns are rampant and peter reveals how to do yours smartly he’s, a consultant and author of the report this originally aired september second, twenty sixteen on tony’s take two thank you, responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com here is peter panepento on who needs campaign counsel three glad to welcome back peter panepento from like a short hiatus from the show’s on early last month, he’s, a freelance writer and principle of panepento strategies, a communications consultancy working with non-profits foundations and companies that serve the sector. He’s, a former assistant managing editor at the chronicle of philanthropy, he’s at panepento dot com and at p panepento peter welcome back. Great to be here, tony way. Haven’t gone too. I know that. What? What brings you back so quickly? This is this is unusual. Generalise does not happen. What? What the hell brings you back so fast? Well, i think it is the release of this new report on do-it-yourself fund-raising that i will work with the chronicle of philanthropy to produce within the last couple of weeks it went live. And i think due to the coincidences of timing, we have another interesting report to talk about pretty quickly. Okay. Excellent. I agree. That is that’s the reason dahna let’s. See? Alright, so do-it-yourself fund-raising what are we talking about? Let’s, make sure everybody knows what this thiss category is all about. Yes, and it’s. Ah, pretty rapidly emerging form of fund-raising. Although it’s not brand new. So if you think back over time, you may have seen campaigns where people decide they’re going to aa run across the country or try to break a guinness book of world records. You know, world records record or shave their head for a cancer charity. Um, these are typically do-it-yourself campaign these air campaign campaigns where a supporter of an organization takes it upon themselves to take on a challenge or do something on behalf of their favorite charity, and then solicits their friends and family for donations. Um, you know, if you think back about terry fox running across canada back in the nineteen seventies and eighties, um, if you even think more recently about the ice bucket challenge where a group of people, you know, decided that it would be ah, great way to raise money for a lot less research to double ice water over their heads. Um, these air campaigns where the charity isn’t doing the heavy lifting their supporters are, and they’re raising money on their behalf. Cool. All right, um, don’t we just call this peer-to-peer fund-raising well, it’s a it’s, a subset of peer-to-peer fund-raising peer-to-peer fund-raising also includes a lot of really charity managed events, so, you know peer-to-peer fund-raising includes walkathon, ds and runs and bike rides and things that are scheduled events that the charity organizes and then people oppcoll out and raise money for charity. Okay, do-it-yourself is really self organized events where the charity doesn’t schedule an event per se or really go to great lengths to organize it it these are things that are really done by the fundraisers themselves, the people who hatch a really interesting idea or or want to take on a challenge of their own, to raise money and with online platforms. Now charities are kind of starting to steer people a little bit and helping them and giving them the tools to do these campaigns on their own in a bit more of a formalised way than they’ve been done in the past, right? Cool. Okay, so i see it’s a it’s, a subset of peer-to-peer but you said the charity’s not organizing their, encouraging you to organize on your own and there’s enormous creativity, and we’re gonna have a chance to talk about some of that on on dh support from the charity, i guess charities air recognizing that if they create this support infrastructure and we’ll have a good chance to talk about all that, too, then you know, they just keep that up and their supporters can can go off and do vast numbers of campaigns all on their own. That’s right? And yeah, and that’s really what’s exciting about this and why a lot of non-profits are really moving into the space and trying to be more aggressive with with helping their their supporters do this for them because it can really become a almost a turnkey way. Teo, get teo, get fund-raising revenue. Now, there are a number of things that you have to do to enable it, and there are pasta oppcoll into it’s doing well, right? We’ll talk about later, but what’s exciting and promising for a lot of organizations as it takes the onus off of them to have to organize some huge event with tons of volunteers and lots of dates staff to make happen. And it gives the tools to the people who are out there raising the money for them to do a lot of that for them. Excellent. Cool. All right, all right. Um, so i know you have lots of examples of great support let’s go in. And the first thing that the report recommends is that there be a a strong platform and we’re just have, like, two minutes or so before our first break. Just so you know, okay, well, i’ll quickly talk about strong platform, and then we can come back to it after a break up, you know, for sure what a lot of charities are doing, and really charity water is one of the groups that hyre knew this is they have created sections of their website where they offer fundraisers, although our, you know, supporters all the tools they need to raise money into do-it-yourself campaign and charity water has done it, giving people the tools to give up their birthdays or their weddings or create their own challenges on their website, and then it really walks them through the process of setting up the campaign, soliciting their friends and doing everything along the way that you need to do to actually successfully execute one of these campaigns as an individual. So a lot of organizations are now investing in creating these platforms almost in the same model that charity water has done. Groups like the world wildlife fund has created a a platform called panda nation, where people can engage in do-it-yourself campaigns and a lot of other organizations that, you know, largely national charities with some local ones, too, are starting to try to create these types of platforms that really give people everything they need teo to do these campaigns and gives them some guard rails and rules of the renault is help them do them well, yeah, panda nation, i love that at a world wildlife that’s called panda nation. Um, i think we might be talking about st baldrick’s to you. You admire a lot of the work that they do around this. Yeah, they are a little bit different in that they they organized people around a specific activity, which is having people volunteered to shave their heads to raise money, right? Ok, so they’re they’re narrowing the focus of what they want volunteers to do exactly what they’ve been able to raise tens of millions of dollars doing it, and they have that really built up a lot of a lot of support and a lot of supporters for their they’re caused by focusing all of their fund-raising really on this activity and providing a lot of the same tools that the other sites are provided to do that so they are a great example of of a group to emulate. If you’re looking at getting into this, uh, space, they’re a bit dinner structured in terms of what the options are and how they encourage people to do it, but ah lot of the same tactics and ideas that apply to other platforms are ones that they’ve really mastered it perfected over the years. Let’s, go out for a first break and you and i’ll keep talking, see if we have anything more to say about the platforms, and then we got conversation about cem. Examples of challenges and marketing and stewardship stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way hyre welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I feel like doing live listener love et cetera right now because i’m just about being back in the studio. It’s been three weeks. I’m pretty sure that was recorded so let’s let’s go abroad first with the live listen love going abroad. Brooklyn, new york now that’s. Not very nice. I’m sorry i take that back. Brooklyn, you’re part of the five boroughs. Let’s really go abroad! Mexico city, mexico welcome live listen her love to you brenholz tartus hi beh china and we have multiple china actually knee how? Seoul, south korea always checking in just like china on your haserot comes home, nita, we have a couple in brazil. We conceicao paulo, we can’t see the other city in brazil, but we know you’re there live listener love teo multiple listeners in brazil we get everybody up vietnam dung, vietnam live ilsen love to you is, well, let’s. Come back into the u s new bern, north carolina st louis, missouri, weehawken, new jersey, brooklyn, new york you deserve a second shot out since i was unkind to brooklyn, bridgeport, connecticut all live listener love to each of each of those and there’s more coming, when we do the live, listen, love course, we got to the podcast pleasantries, because how could we not? How could i who’s the week there’s, no, corporate, we its eye? I’m the host here. I need to be grateful, and i am, in fact, for the over ten thousand listeners each week listening on the podcast, most ofyou on itunes, then stitcher and then lots of other smaller platforms. Player dot fm and podcast, dot net or something, and there’s, one in germany, etcetera, over ten thousand podcast listeners pleasantries to you, the affiliate affections, always going out up our am and fm listeners throughout the country. Let your station no, would you? If you’re if you’re listening on am fm, if you’re one of our affiliate listeners, let your station know that you appreciate non-profit radio, they will appreciate that feedback, and i will, too affections to our affiliate am and fm listeners. Thank you for that indulgence. Peter panepento gotta be going too good to the audience, so thank you. You absolutely do. And you’re not doing this without an audience. Thie audiences, really? Why we’re here talking right now. So if you have to make sure that we’re engaging them and listening back to them to sew for it, i do. I do indeed. So thank you very much. Let’s. Talk about some of the examples. You have some cool examples you mentioned already. Mike fox? No. You to mention mike fox of the the mike. I’m conflating two things. Yeah, there. I got a guy. I got a job with cary out there. Yeah, this couple foxes, right? But somebody got the jump. So i talked about terry fox, who was a cancer patient in canada. Way back. I think in nineteen eighty who excuse me, made worldwide headlines for his quest to run across canada and raise money for cancer research, and he actually died on his mission on dhe never completed the quest, but he’s been a national hero in canada and had really became a model for, you know, the individual who was willing to take on big challenges for big personal challenges to raise money for a cause that matters. And a lot of others have followed in his footsteps over the years, and one of them was a guy named sam fox who, interestingly, raises money for the michael j fox foundation. So i guess we do have a lot of fox’s, trail blazers and do-it-yourself fund-raising but he got he got that job. Damn fox, who was somebody actually interviewed several years? You know, when i was working at the chronicle on staff, he ran the pacific coast trail, i believe, to raise to raise money for for the michael j fox foundation in support of his mother, who was i was dealing with parkinson’s disease and went through some pretty substantial challenges and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the charity as a result of that, um, and on top, on top of his efforts. They actually ended up bringing him on staff to lead uh, uh, basically one of the first do-it-yourself charity sponsor campaigns where he was going out and helping people create their own challenges for the michael j fox foundation. Those are a couple of pretty prominent examples of people who take on extreme challenges to do this. But there’s also a number of people who are doing pretty ordinary thanks to we mentioned head shaving earlier on dh we mentioned how charity water has really pioneered or kind of owned the space on people, pledging their birthdays to raise money for the charity. You know, people are doing all kinds of things there, you know, there organizing your own pancake breakfast. They are, you know, taking on, you know, all kinds of challenges to try to break in a book of world records records, whether it’s around tennis, volleying or bringing groups of people together to sing together and different things like that. So there’s a there’s, a lot of different modes that these campaigns models of these campaigns follow and that’s part of what makes it interesting and fun to see how people are doing this. There’s also the fear ones, there’s, bungee jumping. The report mentions singing karaoke e although i have to find it hard to believe that that’s a real fear. But i guess because somebody is afraid of karaoke e but i that to me is something i’m really but i guess that would probably be something that would not. Yeah, well, if you have, if you have stage fright, i guess that could be a legitimate fear. But anyway, people were you it would be facing us here, but actually, you know, maybe a chance for society. They created a campaign last year called the fearless champ challenge, which was essentially that people could buy-in basically acknowledged what their biggest fear is, and they could collect pledges up to it. You know, a certain dollar level on def. People hit the pole for the pledge than the person would then go and face their fear. Right? So you know, tony let’s say you, you know, let’s, you know, let’s say i am i my biggest fear is actually singing karaoke with you. I know you totally upstage. May i would, you know, tell my friends that you know, if if i collect five thousand dollars in pledges. My friend tony has agreed to have me sing with him. Uh, you know, and then, you know, once that pleasure was hit, you know, you and i would then go and do that, and we would report back with a video of well, did everybody so that they could then laugh at how fat i was doing it. So and they had quite a bit of success with that. They had people do everything from, you know, agreed a bungee jump, tohave spiders crawl over them to eat something that they are, you know, that you know, some food that they’re either afraid of r who are, you know, just, you know, disgusted by all kinds of different things. And again, that leaves the door open for a lot of imagination and a lot of different ways that people can can you can do something personal and fund now to raise money. Long term listeners. The show will remember that years ago, back when i used to chase likes on facebook, i had something under three hundred and a couple of high school friends challenged me that if they could get to three hundred, get me two, three hundred likes the facebook page. The non-profit radio facebook page, not mine. If they would get me to three hundred, then what would i do? And i agreed to do a blue pedicure. Get a blue pedicure on the way. We called it the blue pedicure challenge. And indeed they got me to the three hundred and i went to a salon across the street here on seventy second street in new york city. On die. Got it. I got the boot pedicure. And i chronicled that you could goto the my youtube channel and you will see there’s. There are, i think, there’s three videos there’s. One of me making the appointment and choosing my color had avery. You know, i was kind of a royal blue. I think i chose on dh then there’s one or two. But i think i did it into segments. The actual pedicure and there’s, the waxing, et cetera. The application, of course. The drying, the massaging. Um, what else? Ah, over the parapet treatment. Oh, the hot, powerful treatment that was that’s. A classic. So anything that was that was a highlight of the i have not gotten a pedicure. Since then, but lou pedicure challenges out there, and so, you know, i wouldn’t exactly say i was a pioneer in do-it-yourself fund-raising but it was a way of having fun is exactly what you’re talking about. Exactly, and you know it. You khun, you know, you could be really creative with these and do really personal things. And, you know, if you have, you know, if you have a following on social media or on youtube, this could be another great way for for youto capitalize on that and do some good for your favorite charity. So i don’t think i was familiar with the blue pedicure challenge. That’s. Pretty interesting. Yeah. You know that david has a keel. Who? Right, who runs a peer-to-peer form and is doing a lot of work in this issue. He came up with a for a charity a few years ago, came up with a hot pepper challenge. And, um, i believe he collected past pledges and had others collect pledges for the number of hot cuppers they could even one sitting so there’s. Lots of different ways you can do this. My dad would be into the hot pepper challenge habanero. Is like metoo fish for him. I don’t know if it’s a jew ji food for him. Hadi’s nero’s. Okay, let’s, go right. So we know that we have to have support now, here’s, where we start to get into the infrastructure. And there is, as you mentioned, there’s a cost involved with this there’s overhead. There has to be a platform for you to send people to when they decide that they would like to fund-raising for you in this way. What is this? What is this? This is the platform for the volunteers. We’re going to run their own campaign. What is this platform need thio provide them with? Well, it needs to provide him with a few things. And i know a lot of the the software vendors who served the space are very good at helping build these platforms to and actually have models for them. So if you’re working with one of those companies already there, there may actually be ah, ah, kid or some kind of starter thatyou could use through that vendor toe actually help you get that started. And i won’t name names on vendors here. We’re agnostic, right? No, no, no. Wait, hold on, hold on. Wait, give shoutouts. Teo ifit’s a resource related to what we’re talking about, right? This. Right? Right. So, you know, give you yeah, if you work with the black blotter, a donor driver or any one of those software companies, chances are they’re there now offering some kind of a package for this. And we’ll work with you on creating it. But what it essentially needs tto have in addition to a mechanism for actually collecting donations, typically are, you know, an explanation of how to do that. You know how to do it. Some examples in ways for people to easily set up a campaign. Um, it needs teo, equip them with ways teo message and use social media and e mail actually reach out to their friends and tell them about the campaign that they’re doing. Um and it usually gives them a mechanism for for, you know, reporting back to them and thanking them and actually collecting the donation. So it, you know, all of these platforms of bail tend to look a little bit different, and they give people some different options. But essentially you need to give people a currency. Experience that allows them to do every part of their campaign through your platform and give them the tools to do it very easily. The easier you can make it for people too, not only make the ass, but, you know, post photos and makes, you know, share on social media and and be very clear about how how they could be most effective in doing that better success, you’re going tohave with those with those with those platforms naturally right? You gotta make it easy for your for your volunteers. I’m absolutely ok once we have this. All right. So that’s there some investment? They’re going toe create this yourself which felt like not necessary, but or pay for for a module that’s a turnkey teo be integrated into your sight one way or another. Whether it’s, a vendor, you’re working for somebody you bring on for this. Oh, you purchased for this for this purpose? Exactly. All right. And then we need to be able to we need to drive our volunteers to this. Paige, this platform platform what’s your advice around that? Yeah. And this is probably as crucial. Is having a platform itself is actually making people aware that it’s there and getting them to engage with it, um and, you know, we you know, as we’ve been studying this and i’ve i’ve done this bull foot, the chronicle, and with david hesse kills peer-to-peer forum and talking organizations that air trying this there are some that have essentially created the platform and then not done much marketing behind it and have been, you know, somewhat surprised that nobody came and really used it and raised much money for them. Um, so you really need to do some marketing behind it. You need to think about what audiences or or groups are most likely to want to raise money on your behalf and then and then build a marketing campaign that actually makes them aware that it’s there and comes up with some fun ways to engage them in that, um, the canadian cancer society, which has had a lot of success and this is also invested quite a bit of money in search engine optimization, so that when people type in cancer and fund-raising their sight comes up, so part of it is being being smart about what people might be searching for if they’re our interest in your cause and want to do something about it, you know, making sure that you’ve done the search engine optimization and the google ads and other things that allow your platform to show up when people are actually motivated to do something they mean, you know, they specifically for health charities, they may be very interested in trying to do something for a disease that’s affected a level another themselves or or a friend who may have passed away due to a certain type of cancer making sure that you have your site top of mind and top of google, i guess, for situations like that is it is another important thing to be thinking about investing in on and then making sure that it has a prominent place within your own web universe, that you’re promoting it on your home page in your email newsletters, in any of the other things that you’re doing to make people aware that it’s there and that you’re you’re actually spotlighting examples of others who are doing it for you, too. On google adwords, we just had a show within the past couple of weeks exactly on that topic and the segment is called google adwords, a reminder that google offers ten thousand dollars per month. Complimentary add word add word edward edwards for non-profits so if if you want, if you’re not taking advantage of that, listen to that show on glad words and well, it will get you started, so i mean, essentially is no different than driving people anywhere else. You have facebook page, you have to drive them to that. You have a website, you want to drive people there? Um, you know, it zoho about the marketing and promotions. I’m surprised that there are organizations that are surprised if they set up a platform that nobody comes to it. You have to. Well, i mean, marketing and promotions is one of those things that for non-profits is sometimes a difficult thing to get budget for. So you, you know, and that’s one of the big challenges facing the sector, i think, is that it’s an overhead costs, and it becomes something that a lot of organizations are a little, you know, either budget conscious or don’t necessarily think of it, it is up front and they need teo but it’s something that’s really crucial in a. You know, in a in a, um, environment like this, especially when it’s not built around a specific events or one thing that the organization is doing. This is something that has to be almost on billing. Marketing, uh, because unlike a walkathon or ah, a single event that you can put a lot of weight behind it for a few months and then take the rest of the year off. Something you you almost have to budget for and and work on your round. Okay. Agreed on dh. Yeah, well, and certainly you invest this money. You want this to be a platform that’s going to be used? I don’t know. What’s what’s. A big number for your organization. Hundreds of times, thousands of times or tens of thousands of times. Yeah. You got to keep driving people to it more with peter coming up first. Pursuant, they have a new breakthrough fund-raising content paper for you, not a webinar. This was a content paper. You need to raise more money. This will help you get there, helps you break through two extraordinarily good, better fund-raising it’s. Like all the pursuing content, it is free free, free you’ll. Find the content paper at pursuing dot com click resource is then content papers couldn’t be simpler. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for millennial fund-raising it’s a game show in a local place as a fundraiser for your organization. That’s what these bees are spelling the concert standup comedy live music dancing you’ll see it all in the video from just one night, one of their many nights video is that we be e spelling dot com now time for tony’s take two i thank you so much for listening. We are over twelve thousand in aggregate, the big group, but i’m thanking you. You if you’re listening live, you’ve got your phone and your laptop, your desktop. I’m talking to you right now podcast. If i’m in your ears, i hope you’re not one of those, uh, in a public space and you got your speaker blasting if you are, then i’m telling you that everybody around you is looking at you right now, wishing you to turn your phone down or plug it in. But if that’s not you, then you can ignore that admonition. Thank you, podcast listeners if you are, if that’s your format so glad that you are with us and for the affiliate listeners. So, so glad that you are with us through your am and fm station. However, you’re consuming the show, i’m glad you’re with us. I am grateful for your support. The show wouldn’t be where it is if it wasn’t for each of you individually, you, you, you and you and you times twelve thousand if you are getting my insider alerts on a weekly basis. So you know who the show guests are each week and you know, the video that i do each week get advance linked to that i thank you for accepting that insider alert in your inbox, what each week, each and every week the guy sends the insider alert’s driving metoo maddening? No, i thank you about twelve hundred eleven, twelve hundred on the insider alerts, and this is not a promotion, so i’m not going to tell you how to get them. You can go to tony martignetti dot com, but i’m thanking you if you are getting them and what the heck for a lot of people, you don’t even need him. You’re gonna listen to the show anyway. You don’t need the insider alerts, however you’re consuming the show, however you’re enjoying it. Thank you for being with me, that is tony’s take two here is more of peter panepento. Peter panepento thanks for hanging in there again, your urination, your gracious guy see, i usually don’t have people on for the full hour and even rarer full hour by phone, but you’re you’re you’re reasonably articulate and ah, and engaging so s so i i thought, you know, that’s actually, my tagline let you hang on, okay, should that that kind of lackluster expectations and all your clients would be excited because you’re under produce your under promising and weigh over performing, i’m sure hyre okay, let’s, um all right, i just i guess i just want to stress something on this on this platform and the marketing that your you do that you’re doing to drive people to the to this platform, it really needs to encourage creativity around. I mean, that’s absurd and all the things you’ve been saying that all these vast examples, but of challenges that people have taken out, but you really want encourage people to think outside the the box of what everybody else. Has done the run, the whatever, yes, and so part of it is is giving them some some examples of things that they can do, whether they’re made up examples of things that you would love to see somebody try on your behalf or whether these are things that somebody may have done free organization already and telling the story about that and making sure that that you’re giving them some some guidance on on some of the types of things that they can do on your behalf is really important here. So, um, some, uh, organizations like the world wildlife fund on their panda pages, they actually they have categories of events that end challenges that people can take on to help guide, you know, things that they think their supporters are going to be interested in doing, but also giving them ah, platform to jump off and create their own ideas. Yes. Okay, um, or that you’re able to do that, and and then, you know, and the back end of it really market the fact and tell the stories of the people who are doing campaigns for you so you could spot light them? Um, i think that’s really helpful? Murcott charity water has done again a great job of this two whenever they’ve had somebody do a creative campaign for them, and they’ve had some creative ones, they had somebody swim naked from san francisco to alcatraz after they after they reached a certain fund-raising level and then they also had somebody who who hated the band nickelback. All right, right? This kind listens. Yes decided to basically listen to them nonstop for one hundred sixty eight hour straight at people if people don’t hate it enough to him and when we hold people then and he had a subject himself to that auditory experience, how many hours? How many bonem but they’ve they’ve done a great job of then in turn, you know, telling those stories, you know, creating block post featuring on their home page, creating videos about these things so that they can then show those back to their supporters as examples but also as ways to get attention for the organization. Yeah, cool. How many days is one hundred sixty eight hours? I don’t know what that is that a week? Maybe at seventeen? I don’t know, i was told there’d be no math on this interview, tony. You put me on the spot. You weren’t. You weren’t told that by me. That’s ok, that’s a long time. Hundreds, six hours. I wouldn’t even i wouldn’t have thought that the band nickelback had one hundred sixty eight hours. Maybe he had to replay because handup clolery place. And i hope i hope he was sleeping in there. Some point. Yeah, i was warning about that on dpi breaks also. Okay, let’s, move on. So now, after your your volunteers have done there campaigns or while they’re in the midst of them sorry, i should say what, while they’re in the midst of that, they need support. They they need to be told how to promote their own campaign inside your platform and latto asked and howto follow-up etcetera. Yeah, and this is another really key. Part of it is, once you get them there and get them to agree to do something, you have to walk them through the process. And, um, this is crucial with any peer-to-peer campaign. You know, a lot of organizations have gotten very, very sophisticated at making sure that they’re providing very clear instruction and motivations to their fundraisers around events that they’re doing and sending them e mails, you know, being available to feel their phone calls and questions and and providing incentives to them for reaching different fund-raising global’s along the way with these campaigns, you have to do the same thing. You really have to make sure that you have systems in place to be communicating pretty regularly with the people who agree tio take on one of these challenges and and giving them tips and advice and and maybe even many challenges along the way i do to help them be successful with these. So a lot of a lot of the more successful campaigns, they’re ones that you no have, ah series of e mails that they send out at various times to participants, you know, telling them how to how did for what’s that they’re friends, uh, you know, reminding them when they haven’t sent out ah message or collected ah, niu donation in awhile and giving them prompts and different things along the way to help them, um, help them be successful with the song fund-raising and some organizations actually have staff people who will, you know, reach out personally. By phone or e mail and make sure that their questions are being answered and that they’re getting the support they need along the way to do well, yeah, that’s where this is would be a challenge, i think, for some smaller shops you you need to be able teo provide that. I mean, well, are there organizations that are doing it all on lee automated, and they don’t have personal support like that, like, you know, a line you can call or someone you can chat with live? Is that maybe maybe that’s less common than i’m realizing? How common is that personal support? Well, i think, you know, for a lot of the larger campaigns are a lot of it is automated, and but but they do have some people who are minding the store and watching and making sure that when people are, you know, bumping their heads and facing challenges are now being very active, that they are following up with them and being being in touch with them. Um, so but, you know, in talking to a lot of these groups, this is an area that is a challenge for them is figuring out what is the right level of support to offer? How can they do this in a way where they’re not, you know, creating a whole new fund-raising arm in their organization, but are still providing that level of support and and, uh, service that’s needed teo do this well, andan other thing we’re hearing and because this is a pretty new form of fund-raising there are actual questions, a lot of organizations about, you know, who in the organization and, you know, should be leading these efforts and where it should live? Is it something that lives holy in the development department? Does it live in your marketing shop? Doesn’t live in some cases in your technology section because they’re the ones who are leading the platform. I’ve spoken to people and organizations who, where all kinds of different hats who are engaged in leading these campaigns and i think, um, i think it’s going to take a little bit of time to figure out what the best practices are in term and most effective practices are making sure that if you are going to lead do-it-yourself campaign that that you have fought through, you know how to, uh how how to structure and howto have the right people in the organization leading it. Your research didn’t lead youto find that there’s there’s one ah form of organization or location where this lives that’s that’s more popular than others. It’s really is pretty much a scattershot still it’s been a bit scattershot, but i think the groups that are most most advanced on it are ones that already have peer-to-peer fund-raising it’s part of their part of their tool kit. Um, i think the groups that, you know have people that are there organizing walks and rides and various other peer-to-peer programs are seeing the opportunities here first because they’re engaged with this kind of fund-raising already and they’re they’re talking to each other, so a lot of groups are doing this out of their, you know, their peer-to-peer arm of their organizations already, but, you know, world wildlife fund, you know, this has been a major technological investment for them, so they have technology people who are really kind of the key voices within the organization on that and for charity water. This was, uh, pretty much an essential and central part of the organization when it found it ten years ago, with these types of campaigns, so i think, it’s, much more marketing driven through that organization, so there’s different different avenues to get there, but for groups that are starting and now, and you are researching it now, these are questions that they’re starting to ask, okay, um, interesting. Ah, pronunciation. Now you say charity water, i say charity water, i’m putting the emphasis on water. So now i suddenly i don’t like to quibble on non-profit radio, although i am, but but i don’t know, i i think it should be charity water, because that doesn’t scott harrison want the emphasis on the water and not on the charity part? I’m pretty sure he does. You’re absolutely right. Charity water charted water, charity water, not charity. Charity, border, charity, charity water. I’m sure, but i’m pretty sure it should be charity water. Okay, well, we have actually we’ve got some live. Listen, love. We got new york, new york. A wonderful buy from charity. Water is listening, but also joining us a new afresh. Oakland, california. Boston, massachusetts and tehran, iran. Wow, live listen love to each of those and we got more if i didn’t say your country yet, then? Ah, you’re coming, so live listen, love going out to even more countries in a few moments, but okay, i’m a digression on princessa how? Yeah, where do you excuse me? Charity water, though? It’s it’s, charity durney water. Well, i just i think i just gave you the definitive att leased for purposes of this show, but this is the center of the universe. So as far as i’m concerned, that’s the way it ought to be for all, for all being in all time. But at least when you’re on my show, you know, yeah, i charity water, but i’ve never heard scott harrison, so i don’t know he’s the ceo of charity water for those i don’t mean to name drop not like he’s a friend. I just know of him. Charity water. Okay, yes. So you’re essentially all right. So i understand that there’s there’s there’s timing challenges around what level of support and when people need support, but essentially the principle is you need to be a cheerleader for your volunteer fund-raising resort out there, absolutely. And you need to be talking to them regularly and giving them instruction. And as you said being a cheerleader, encouraging them, but also giving them, uh, advice and help along the way. I helped them do this successfully. And, you know, while there isn’t a straight formula for a lot of these, uh, campaigns yet in terms of you have tto send seven e mails over the course of two months, uh, you know, to make these work most effectively what’s, very clear is that you have to have something that is that is regular and consistent and as clear as possible. And then you have to be paying attention to the results of those different communications and seeing what’s working and learning from that so that you can put your, uh, put the right emphasis on the right things. Moving forward. School. Okay, let’s, go out for our last break. And when we come back to peter and i’ll keep talking ah, about this, of course, and we got a bit of a double edged sword there’s opportunities here. But there’s also challenges. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation. Top trans sounded life that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i am his niece, carmela. And i am his nephew, gino. I love that drop. But i got i got i gotta tear listening to them. Well, i was just with them last week in down the beach. More live listener love. Here it is i promised it since since last tehran iran checking in live love going out to tehran, chunking china and also guangdong, china now taipei, taiwan. I don’t know if type has been with us much, but certainly ni hao going out to taiwan as well. And also newberg, newberg, germany cool gooden dog for germany gotta love the live love i do i do all right, peter, we have just, like, five minutes left or so roughly, i’d say, is that about right, sam? Get a little more than that, like, ten minutes. So let’s, talk a little about how this is ah, bit of ah, double edged sword. You alluded to some of the challenges, but let’s start with an upside. On the other hand, you’re getting lots of new donors which creates a challenge, right? You you’re getting new donors on dure also finding ways to engage some of the current donors you have who may be, you know, looking for something new and a new way to support your organization? Yes, but yeah, but the challenge that becomes whenever you get new donors is is how do you how do you bring them into your organization and make sure that they don’t become a one and done donor on dh that’s? I think a big a particular challenge for these kinds of campaigns because they’re not, quote unquote traditional in the same way where somebody who gives to you through a through, you know, a mail campaign or even through a personal solicitation, these air folks who are doing something that’s kind of unique and different and may only do it once for you because it is so unique and different, i think it’s probably in a lot of cases, a lot easier to take on a physical challenge once and ask people for money than it is to do it a second time. There’s a novelty to a lot of these things, so for a lot of organizations they are, they’re happy to get the money and build the connection with thes supporters, but they’re struggling a bit on how to how to do that stewardship and kind of move them up. The engagement ladder so that they do more things with some down the line. Um, and this has been particularly true for the a l s association after the ice bucket challenge or something they didn’t even plan for an organized to create a platform for this, but they suddenly had a lot of donors who were who were taking part in a massive do-it-yourself campaign who are now part of their donordigital face and they’ve been really, you know, thinking about and struggling over the last couple of years the right way and the most effective way to keep them engaged in the organization and to get them to come back and get more down the line. That was let’s talk about the number, then there’s two and a half million to something new donors to the organization, right? Yeah, i think. And on and on top of that, a lot of them had no connections the cause before they embark in this campaign for a lot of them, they don’t have a personal connection to a less, but they were made aware of it, and they were compelled enough not only you know, um uh, take the challenge. But also to write a check and give to the organization so they they have this massive opportunity, but they but they can’t communicate with these owners in the same way that they do those who are have been part of their network for a long time. Um, and they can’t necessarily count on, ah, high number of them that turn around and get to them again. Yeah, i know that that was one of the things that barbara, uh, sure, i can remember her last name remember the name of the ceo of charity water, peter barbara. She was a guest in any case, it’s not so much a lot. The last slaughter, who is up development person and, you know, they’ve they’ve come up with some some things that they think are working well for them, and one of them is is communicating a lot about the impact of the gifts that we’re given and talking about the progress that those gifts have made on dh then in turn, saying, you know, additional support will help us get, you know, here, here and here, so they’re they’re really putting a big focus on, you know, showing not only showing the impact of the gifts, but also showing that they’ve been spending those funds wisely and are getting results out of it. And that’s that’s been a message they found not only works well, but also validates a lot of aa lot of what people did for them two years ago when they did that. Yeah, well, that za smart way to start to engage people and they had all sorts of challenges in and opportunities when this thing broke without twenty fourteen i guess the in fact and it was almost two years it was two years ago it ended, right? I’m pretty sure it ended. Really. It was the equivalent of winning the lottery, right? For sure, you know, they suddenly had all of this great, these great, unexpected resource is but, you know, when you’re not planning for that there’s, you know, there’s a lot of challenges, that pompel offense, so you know, there, dave, i think dahna very responsible job of communicating about about those challenges and how they’re addressing them and what they’re learning along the way, but you know, it is it’s almost impossible to fall into something like that and have the and have everything in place that you need to be able, teo capitalize on a perfectly yeah, it’s fell in their lap, and, uh, that was, as i was starting to say, that was one of the challenges that barbara and i talked about when she was on in would’ve been october of twenty fourteen. She was a guest for the hour. In fact, we recorded that at the chronicle, flat to the studio, because they’re in washington, d c andi, i was down there and worked it out, but i actually remember that one. Yeah, that was that was one of that. That was one of the highest profile. You damn well, second to this one. Of course, that means break today, right? That’s, right, that’s, right. Okay, s so you know, how do how do shepherd these new donors to your organizations work longer term? All right, clearly. So that’s one and i think another another key challenges is budgeting for this. You know, some some of these campaigns kind of jumped the wall and becoming really successful. Um, a and a lot of cases you can’t plan for that and b you can’t necessarily expect to replicate in the next year. So if you have somebody who, you know, does a, uh do-it-yourself campaign and they raise two hundred or three hundred thousand dollars for you, um, you can’t necessarily expect that donor to do the same thing for you next year. So how do you plan for that? How do you make sure you budget, um, responsibly for that revenue and set the right expectations within your organization. That’s? So that’s another challenge that we’ve heard organizations reply or to us something else that’s mentioned in the report. That’s very closely related to that. Budgeting for for the future is just getting the volunteers to do repeat campaigns in the future. Right? Right. And that’s. Some that’s. That’s. Certainly a big challenge. St baldrick’s. Has been great with us. They’ve found a really creative way. Tio encourage people, tio take part multiple times and there’s their head chadband shaving campaigns um, and they’ve excuse me. Created am a secret society, i guess it’s not a secret society, but a society called the knights of the bald table. And if you take part in seven, uh, had shaving campaigns with them, they actually we’ll hold an event for you and have, uh, you know, basically ah, knighting ceremony for you. And you get a special pen and you get quite a bit of recognition for it. So, you know, there are some ways that organizations are tryingto deal with this issue and find some fun and creative ways to get people to come back and do something more than once. But it is a challenge because, you know, the first time i see i’m going to go sing karaoke with tony. My friends may think it’s a fun saying the second time they were like, well, i saw that act already. Yeah, right. Supported again, right, let’s like me doing blue pedicure challenge too, right? Right. Who cares now, now, now, if i did read pure a pedicure challenge, that would it would be different that way, a whole new campaign that’s completely different, but you can’t go back to the blue, you can never go back. All right, we have a couple more minutes left and what have we not talked about? What if i not ask you that you’d like to like to like to? Well, i think one one thing i think is really interesting on this is just the fact that it is such a a kind of an evolving form of fund-raising that that organizations are really craving information and craving opportunities connect with each other about it. So you know one thing that i’m working that try to identify our ways that not only can can we provide good resource is through the chronicle truth peer-to-peer forum and through other sources like this, but also how can we bring people together and get them talking about this war? And i certainly would welcome you know, anybody in the audience who is thinking about this and working on this, who wants to talk about it, to reach out to me, reach out to you and find a way to further the conversation because i i think because, you know, because it is such a evolving form of of a kind of formal fund-raising now you know, the book is still being written, so to speak, on how to do it well, and the more input we could get, the better contact, peter, because once this is over, i have no interest in the topic. I’m committed to nothing, so contact peter directly. Alright, i’m more than happy to take the no, i’m committed. I’m committed everything. All right, he’s on twitter, he’s at p panepento write the name of the report is the do-it-yourself fund-raising handbook is there? Ah, is there a convenient earl at a to chronicle site? Peter or no, i have a far from convenience. Okay, yeah, that’s the one i have, so just the do-it-yourself fund-raising handbook, you’ll find it on the chronicle of philanthropy site labbate and and i believe they are after labor day going to start really heavily marketing it, and including it and their philanthropy today newsletter another six to so there will be you know, there’ll be a lot of opportunities to see it, and if you follow me on twitter, i will be tweeting about it. And sharing the limbs there quite a bit over the next few weeks as well. Okay, very cool. Very cool. All right. So i want to thank you again for coming on quickly again, since just since august. That was very gracious of you. You do call report. So? So i’m happy to give voice to them. But now i’ve lost interest in the topic. So it’s all good. So we get fifty, fifty minutes your attention and that’s it. Yeah, i get that there’s a lot going on. It’s. A busy place? Absolutely. Well, i look forward to the next. The next time i help with something that is of interest to you for, you know, a half hour and hour that’s right about it trying to move on. And we’ve got another next-gen. Alright, do not assume it’ll be an hour next time. Thank you for well done. No, thank you very much. Peter. Thankyou. Thankyou, tony. All right. My pleasure. Next week. Have i ever let you down? Well, maybe there was that one show on fermentation that that was a bit sour. That was august second. Twenty thirteen. Sorry about that, you know, puns. The it’s. The most creative form of humor, unless you’re not the one who thought of it. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com, responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we b e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Betty mcardle is our am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and this cool music is by scott stein. It was me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy, the stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a, m or p m so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane. Toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts, tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell you put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for March 24, 2017: Fire Up Your Board Fundraising

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Gail Perry: Fire Up Your Board Fundraising

Consultant and author Gail Perry will reveal proven techniques to motivate your board to step-up to their fundraising responsibilities. Her book is “Fired Up Fundraising.” (Originally aired 11/12/10. And board fundraising is still an issue.)

 

 


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Oh, hi there. Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We have a listener of the week, sean congo. He e mailed me. I work in the innovation space and i find your non-profit radio podcast super relevant to what i do loved twenty seventeen legal tips episode thank you twenty seventeen legal tips episode that was aaron bradrick on january sixth. Jean takagi blew it. I invited him, but he couldn’t pull it together, so he had someone from his office do it. I’m not sure if it’s drugs or alcohol, it might be i don’t know. Maybe it is you tell me it might be drugs or alcohol. I just don’t know. Sean continues, i just put an awesome review and rating on itunes and just wanted to pass on the love, keep doing your thing and inspiring us to crush it. Well, it’s actually be great is what i encourage at the end of encourage it’s more than just an encouragement and explicit demand. Be great. So it’s not quite crush it. But it’s it’s i think crushing it is. Ah, is lesser than be great any case, shawn still grateful whether it’s crushing it or be great. Thanks for loving non-profit radio. Thank you for the itunes raid in review. Um, and you can find us on itunes at non-profit radio dot net. Just saying, i don’t know is that inappropriate self promotion? I don’t know you tell me, he’s shaun congo neo-sage a w n k a n ew ngo and he’s at sean congo dot com sean, thank you so much for the non-profit radio love. Congratulations on being this week’s listener of the week and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d get hit with ridiculous oh, gangly own itis if you got me nervous with the idea that you missed today’s, show, fire up your board fund-raising consultant and author gail perry will reveal proven techniques to motivate your board to step up to their fund-raising responsibilities. Her book is fired-up fund-raising and that originally aired november twelfth, twenty ten this show’s been around a long time, you know, we’re coming up on seventh anniversary in july every every july is another fifty shows, so in november two thousand ten, we were about joy was never remember four months old. Is that right? Yes, four months old. So the quality of my questioning may not be up to what you’re accustomed to in these days, but the information still very relevant board fund-raising still very, very much an issue seven years later, and we didn’t only start talking about it in two thousand ten on tony steak, too. Naps and that’s right naps two weeks in a row are you gonna give me trouble with that? We’re about it off my back with the naps responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com here is gail perry on firing up your board fund-raising from november two thousand ten, fire up your board fund-raising i’ll be joined by gail perry. Gale is a consultant and the author of fired-up fund-raising turned board passion into action. Her book title pretty much says it all, she’s going to share proven techniques to motivate your board to step up to their fund-raising responsibilities gayle’s book is published by wiley, and it is available on amazon gail’s. With us for the hour i’m joined now by the president of gale perry associates, gail perry is a consultant and author. As i said earlier, her book is fired-up fund-raising turned board passion into action, published by wiley, available on amazon dot com. Gail is an international speaker on this subject, and she leads her own has led her own consulting firm for over fourteen years. I’m very glad that gale’s practice brings her to the show today. She’s joining us from north carolina? Welcome, gail. How you doing? I’m doing well. Welcome. Welcome to the show. Pleasure to have you. Yeah. Why’s fund-raising important for board members. Well, actually, they they actually own for our big fun for it. And many say that they have a very bilich boardmember not agree with gail. I’m gonna interrupt you. I know you’re on your own. A vonage connection, i think. Is that you? Yeah. And it’s breaking up a little bit. Do you have another phone that you can call on and i will do a little a little song and dance while you call him. Okay. Please do this’s. Tony martignetti let me. Okay, i was all set for my song and dance like this, she cuts me off. We’re just having a little technical problem with trying to get a good connection from gail galley there matter-ness it sounds better. One we want to continue with the question why? And you cut me? I didn’t get to do my song and dance. You believe this? Alright, maybe. Maybe later notion. Uh, gail, you still there? There, gail that’s. Beautiful. All right. You know, this is live radio because this wouldn’t happen. Otherwise we have gale back, but we’re going to take this break. I’ll be joined by gail perry after this break. Please stay with me. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website. Philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent dahna. I’m joined now by gail perry. Our subject is fired-up you’re bored fund-raising gail, you’re with us, right? Okay, excellent, much, much better and let’s go to that first question. Why is fund-raising important for board members? Gale? Well, boardmember have such a responsibility to make sure the organization is successful, but the problem is that many organs many boardmember zehr not enlisted a recruited on dh, told when they’re recruited that theirjob fund-raising so at the outset, they should be told they should be told, and it doesn’t happen. I think that non-profits or embarrassed to ask him or afraid to bring it up, and i think it backfired terribly because then the staff wants the board to helping fund-raising in the board says what? What do you what do you know? What about yes, you know, the chronicle of philanthropy just yesterday in the online edition had an article about the frustrations among non-profits that board members don’t step up to this important obligation. And on the side bar there were four articles going back to i think nineteen, ninety seven since then, and all of them had the headline’s something like non-profit boardmember sze don’t step up. To their responsibilities, and here was basically that four or five maybe articles since i think nineteen, ninety seven, i know this is an enormous area of frustration for non-profits yeah, it is, but the problem is that i think i think non-profits bear a lot of the blame because i think i think, frankly, i think their expectations are way too high. You can’t expect untrained volunteers to be successful in fund-raising when they’ve never done it before and they may not have the personality for it, frankly, i don’t want on that boardmember soliciting because they wouldn’t be good at it. You probably have to clean up. Okay, we’re gonna talk about that later on. But what other roles there are around fund-raising besides soliciting, but so you think you think the responsibility lies with the non-profit wants a little more about that? Yeah, there’s a there’s, a sinus flandez says, we all get the boards we deserve on that means that the more time and energy you spend on your board them or you get out of him, and i think that non-profit leaders need to take take a leadership role with their board and give them training and talkto them about expectations and talk to them about what it is that the job of the board members is to do because somebody boardmember don’t know, and i’m frankly, a frankly, i think a lot of people who serve on board are very well meaning people, and they want to do a good job, but you got to tell him what you need. Yeah, that’s always that’s always the case, they’re passionate about the mission, and i know part of your messages toe unleash that passion, we’ll get to that they’re always passionate about, otherwise they would have turned you down, you know, they care, but you gotta figure out a way to make it easy for him and make it fundez form and what are some of the challenges that that are either organizational or personal to board members? Well, you know, the one thing they don’t know anything about fund-raising they be racking, i think it’s unreasonable to assume that somebody can do a great job when they when they’re totally untrue ride and i’m a battle that weary, hardened veteran of twenty five years and fund-raising and i’m very comfortable with that i got his sessions, like write articles in conferences understand the techniques in the technology, so one of the rules is they don’t understand it at all. I think four members think that fund-raising is all about asking for money, and we all know that that’s not particularly good fund-raising because good fund-raising is much more of a cultivation process in the relationship driven process, but if boardmember think it’s all about asking and it’s all about money, then they freeze, you know, from from my perspective, i think fund-raising is about changing the world and helping children and helping the environment and all the things that you’re raising money for, and the board members get stuck in this mythology of what they think fund-raising years, and they make it into this horrible yucky, embarrassing, um, tacky, poor manners, you know, that they made it back-up also its myths about it, but when you do it right, it’s, a really joyful experience and your matching donors with causes that mythology often is carried on by the organization. Yeah, you know, i think i think i think fundrasing got a bad rap all around because a lot of people are nervous about it. And they don’t they don’t understand it. They don’t know how to do it well. And and it does take a special skill set really does. What about the the meetings that board members are attending and they’d be used for your left looking she’s laughing at me on my own show? You believe this? I know you. I know you’re laughing, but i’m a delight. Board meetings don’t think that board meetings are boring, and i think the board members would tell you that they’re boring and i would say to you, if you have boring meetings, what kind of a board? And you gonna have a board board? Uh, and if you have a board board, i don’t think they’re going to take action and fundrasing so it’s very important that we make boardmember into a cheerleading session and a and a exciting motivational experience now, that’s interesting. Sometimes, you know, something called a cheerleading session is used pejoratively, but obviously you don’t mean that. How would you turn boardmember into a cheerleading session? Well, you know, i think it’s gotta have some excitement in passion to it. I think the leadership has got to be passionate and excited? I think you’ve got to talk about important issues. You’ve got a door way. Shit boardmember time with crap. Excuse me. You know, um thank you. You bring in testimonials from people who who, uh, who are being helped by your organization. I mean, just last night i was doing aboard retreat with our local women’s center, and i asked the director to tell us a story of something that had touched her heart recently. And she said she told the story of this woman who had two children, preschool children, small ones. Her husband lost his job and he abandoned the family. And she was that her last resort. She didn’t know what to do. She was going to get evicted from her apartment. She has no money. She had nothing. Two small children had never worked outside the home. And when gene, the director of the women’s center, told her that that the women’s center could help her with her rent for a couple months so she got herself established. The lady burst into tears and gene in telling the story. Last night she cried, had a blower nose and and you know, it was in front. Of all the board members and the board members really got it about how important their work. Wass and it was a very touching and motivational. It was probably the most touching moment i experienced all weekend work. Yeah. That’s. An outstanding story. And in a in a board meeting. And what was the reaction to board members? Could you see any? Oh, yeah. Physical reaction. Thank you, teo. I think they feel that the energy. So i think a lot about energy. I think that energy probably maybe is the basis of all this stuff. Let’s talk a little more about that because you think about it a lot. What do you mean about energy? You know, do you let me give you a little example? Do you have a friend whose energy is like the cold, clammy kitchen sink? You know what has been friday night with them? Right? But do you have a friend whose energies like the warm sunshine and you want to spend time with them? And one of my great fund-raising motta’s is winding down. Throw a party because what if you could make what you’re doing fun? You would trap people, teo and it board meetings air fun. If the board members enjoy getting together, if, um, if they if you could make your boar biddies into a party and let people enjoy themselves, you attract more people to your cause. And if you’re having a fund-raising of yet turned that into a party and you will bring me more money. There’s a whole lot of this attitude about, uh, being gregarious and being i mean, you changed the world by expanding your energy and influencing other people. And if boardmember zehr embarrassed about fund-raising and embarrassed about, quote, hitting up somebody or something, their energy is going to be like the clothes cold, clammy kitchen sink. So i gotta get boardmember away from their myths about fund-raising being yucky and get him pointed toward maybe friendraising so they could be excited about what they’re doing and really inspired about the work. And and there are other activities which we’ll talk about that that are appropriate around fund-raising. It’s interesting that the act of fund-raising can be seen as yucky and clammy and dirty and embarrassing and begging, even which is a very debased form of human action or the same action at same activity fund-raising can be seen is one of the most powerful shining examples of compassion and human. Yes, i’m talking with gail perry she’s, a consultant and author of the president of gale perry associates, and her book is fired-up fund-raising turn board passion into action. Gail, aside from the’s, very poignant testimonials at meetings, how else can can we in live in this thiss passion? Well, i like, i’d like to ask for members by the care. What do you mean? Just go around the table and ask or, you mean, write it out? How? Well, how logistically detail? How would we do that? Development director for hospice tried the question with her group this way, she said to our board members, and they were very stiff bunch of noone who didn’t like they thought their job is to manage money, not to raise it, you know, that kind of people, and she went around the table and she said, tell me what? Legacy you’d like to leave from serving on sport, right? They went around the table. Whoa. And he said you would have thought i’d open the floodgates. She said she had never seen such emotion in such passion in these people and she said she changed way have a meeting she had had with these people in three years in a again a very telling story. Gale, we actually we have a call and i haven’t even said the number. Look at this. If you’d like to talk to gail are calling number is eight. Seven seven for eight xero for one, two zero, eight, seven, seven. Forty xero for one to zero and we have a caller. What is your name, please? Hi. My name is marion marion. Hi. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. What’s. Your question for gail might. My question is, what are boardmember sze? We’ve made the mistake. Scale is already, uh, discussed in terms of we didn’t pre educate them about the fund-raising aspect. I guess going forward, you know, live and learn. How do we go forward in picking board members? How do we screen them and educate them before we picked them that this is going to be part of their job duty. And also does she have any ideas in terms of resources that we could use to get people over this hump of feeling like fund-raising is yucky because i agree with friendraising legally, maybe the goal is to ask those friends for money, and how do we educate our board members appropriately? Barry and i’m going to ask youto take the answer off off off line on the air because you’re breaking up a little bit, but we have your questions. Thank you very much for calling again the number the number to call is eight seven seven for eight xero for one to xero gale, what about the marin’s? First question on on screening board members? Well, let me give you an example. I’m chair of the board governance committee for statewide boarding here in north carolina, and we were literally a fund-raising board and we have changed our mission to write be much more specific about fund-raising and it’s, my job to be the rude i’m sorry, it’s, my job to be in charge of the boardmember recruitment process, not surprised, and so we’ve had people in action all over the state all year and, you know, feel feeling and potential boardmember and i have gotten off the phone with thes women that we’re enlisting, and i said, listen, i just want to go over with you, the expectations, and i don’t you to be surprised i said the really number one job of boardmember xyz to be leaders in their local fund-raising event in their local towns and do you have any problem with calling people for sponsorships and blah, blah, blah? And they’re very explicit to him, and they usually say, no, i’m happy to do that, and then i say and, you know, i just want to let you know that most of the board members almost all of us are contributing at the thousand dollar level is trailblazers and out of what be surprised about that either? And do you think that’s, something you could consider and the people i talked to said, yeah, i think i can consider that so it’s been it’s been amazing? That has been so easy for me to talk about it because it can be embarrassing, but somehow i’m not the person who enlisted them. I’m sort of like the policeman to screen them before they come on the board because they want to be accepted into this group of very high powered women, and they don’t want any surprises, and so they’re pretty grateful for the for the conversation with me, and they’re really what about putting these expectations in writing nothing that’s very helpful. So after you’ve gotten their verbal but there’s, nothing there a lot of organizations that have lots of written expectations that board members have signed and nothing happened. Yeah, well, ok, of course, that the writings need to be enforced mohr essential than the riding it out. Okay, think about it because you gotta oddball people or get him on the phone and very direct people don’t read stuff anyway, right? Well, but so are you suggesting a conversation and then something in writing? Onda writing, of course, needs to be enforced. People don’t enforce stuff going just although i do know a couple of boards that they give their boardmember xero sort of a report card at there place every board meeting about where they stand on their commitment. Yeah, well, i think we’re going to talk later. That’s wonderful! We’ll talk later and we’ll talk later in the hour about self assessment in just a minute, we have left before a break. Gale, can you share with our caller the sum of the second question cem resource is for making fund-raising more appealing. Yeah, and if i could suggest a my website gai o perry dot com, i have a ton of articles, uninspiring board members and lots of different techniques in conversations to stage with them to help them change their attitude about fund-raising i think you need to have a frank fear of convert xero fund-raising ization, um, and that i think that’s very healthy and what you call it cleansing moment, so let him throw up about it. Uh, and then you’ve gotta have a conversation about abundance versus scarcity and about the importance of optimism and the connection to their passion and then friend making such a big deal because, frankly, i held my speak all over the country on this, and i’ll tell everybody i would rather have a friend to my cause than a donor. Excellent gail, we’re going to take a break. Those resources are available at gail perry dot. Com and you’ll also find a link to those resources, which are which are excellent. I was through them on my block it mpg a dv dot com under the show today’s show post we’re going to take a break after the rake. Of course, gail parry stays with us and hope you do too more with gail perry is coming up first. Pursuant, they have the replay of the break through fund-raising webinar it is up and it’s pursuing so you know that it is free if you want to break through two extraordinary fund-raising this is going to help you out, you’ll figure out the invisible obstacles that are holding you back. Affiliates here is another resource you can take advantage of if you couldn’t make the live webinar catch it now sometimes the timing doesn’t work out for our affiliates, but now you get the archive version it’s up it’s at pursuing dot com click resource is than webinars couldn’t be simpler. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for millennial fund-raising how about a game show in a local place as a fundraiser? That’s what these bees are spelling bee concert stand up comedy live music, dancing check out their video it’s that we b e spelling dot com very cool events now time for tony’s take two. I love naps and get off my back about it. Yes, it’s two weeks in a row, back off, it’s my show i’ll do whatever the hell i want and i’m a fan of napping you only need research says about twenty minutes toe work more efficiently for the rest of your workday so give in to that post lunch slump. Naps are encouraged all over the world and my video has links to research the twenty minute research. And i’ve got a link to worldwide nap culture and also a link to a video that i did on minute sweets when i was at the d f w airport, where i wake up from an in sweet nap and i review that service minute sweets at airports, they’re they’re cool. I got a link to that also, the video is at tony martignetti dot com all about naps gotta love him. That is tony steak too live listen, love goes out were pre recorded but the love goes out on the day that the show is live then not. Now i have love, but it’s got going out now it goes out. Then this day, today in the future, the live love, everybody who’s throughout the world. We know they’re in asia. We know we got asia. Ah, we know we got california. We know you got new york, new york, they’ve been. You’ve been very consistent. New york, new york, new bern, north carolina consistent so the love goes out to the live listeners and quick on the heels of the podcast pleasantries to the over twelve thousand listening in the time shift very, very glad that you are with us. That’s the vast majority of our listening audience pleasantries to the podcast listeners and the affiliate affections got to do him am fm affiliate stations throughout the country later station know that will be be glad i get occasional feedback, but not too much from our am and fm stations. Let them know you’re listening. Please do a service to them and for non-profit radio our affiliate listeners throughout the country on the am and fm stations, the family of the family of stations non-profit radio i’m glad you’re with us affiliate listeners here’s the rest of gale perry on firing up your board fund-raising my guest is gail perry, the author of fired-up fund-raising turned board passion into action that is published by wiley and available at amazon. Gail, you left with a very interesting ah sort of ah, phrase, repeat that for us and let’s let’s think about that. Grantmaking i don’t want to see it. I said i would rather have a friend to my cause than a donor rather have a friend in a donor, and people are shocked when i say that it’s a little more about the reason is that i ask everybody, what will a friend do for you? You know, and friends to your cause will do everything in the world, including give money, and so maybe we do need to change our fund-raising in the friend making, because if you make friends out of your donors and bring them much more deeply into the cause and get them really involved, then they’ll stick with you for the long run, and we have a terrible problem in fund-raising ofwhat we call donorsearch trish in which is, of course, the fact that donors give once and then they slip away. Or give twice and they don’t stick around. I mean, do you know that the donor attrition and i do not know them, but before you, before you cite wth, um, i do know that it’s it costs a lot more time and money to find a new donor than it does to treat well and retain an existing donor. You know, i was reading some statistic. They said it was it cost ten times more to get a new donor or a new customer for business than it does to retain one of those attrition way halling statistic is that across the board, the probability that i will make a second gift, your organization, after i made the first one, is only fifty percent at really that’s the high fifty percent, really some other studies cited even lower than that. And so i would say that non-profits are failing miserably, a customer service and donorsearch so therefore maybe maybe maybe we do need to focus on our current donors and love him a lot and involving more daily rather than going out and beating our heads against the wall in the much harder work bringing and, of course, every organization is going to have their own statistic, which they certainly should be tracking their own their own donor, tricia, while they ought to be, i think, tracking their own donor attrition on dh if they find that number to be hi, that percentage to be hi. What? What can they be doing, teo? To reduce that to reduce the attrition? Got lots of things they could do you that wee hollow. How old movement in fund-raising called donor-centric fund-raising and that there was just a twitter chat on that topic that i was following a little while ago. Donor-centric fund-raising means that you are thinking about your donor rather than yourself all the time. And you communicate with your donor frequently with cheerful news about the results that you’ve achieved in the world with their gift. And you do everything you can to make the donor feel passionate and connected. You invite, um, two special things you send him special mailings. You you do not, uh, meaningful information about what you’re doing does not include a boring newsletter because studies show that most donors fund that non-profit newsletters are boring and they don’t read. Um and you know, somewhere some organizations have what they call a donor appreciation of the end if something signs boring that sign sporting, i’d rather go to a barbecue. Some eyes have to settle, celebrate the donors, but not to a donor appreciation of. So i think non-profits need to think a lot more entrepreneurially about what donorsearch customer service really looks like and be creative with whatever the organization does in terms of programming to bring violent, bring donors in so programming communications. Well, thankyou statistics show that the phone call thank you probably is the most powerful to keep a donor giving and connected, and i think one of the best ways well, i don’t know. Ah, great way for donors for board members to be involved. Eyes making those thank you calls. Absolutely. I have some clients who do that, others don’t but just a simple just called to say thank you not to ask for anything more, not even to invite you, but just to say thank you, right? And i’ll be. Burke is the great canadian researcher has done a study after study on the statistical results of what happens when boardmember say thank you and interfere, make a phone call to say thank you and hurt her very first study that she’s repeated over and over with many different sides organizations. Here’s the first study is amazing, she’s working with the canadian paraplegic association and they were doing a phone mail campaign all across canada, and the average gift of this campaign was twenty six dollars. And she did a test and had the board members make a thankyou phone call within twenty four hours after the gift was received to one out of every ten donors on that big campaign. So they they made their phone calls. The boardmember had a great time. They enjoyed it. It was theory well orchestrated. Five months later, they re solicited both group, the group that hadn’t gotten a phone call and the groups that had gotten a phone call. And so guess how much muchmore money? The people who were phone called game i don’t know, did a double thirty nine percent there, nine percent more from the ten percent so here’s proof that boardmember can directly impact the bottom line and fund-raising without having to ask for money, right? And that’s what we alluded to earlier it’s, not it’s. Not all about asking. Oh, and so that’s that’s what all of my message is all about? And i think border treats around the country, and i’m very popular with boards because i give them easy ways to make a difference and fund-raising that don’t involve asking, so they like me and also try to turn the retreat into a party and they like that. Yes, well, you’re very popular with tony martignetti non-profit radio, but we got to call you before i had announced the phone number to call. Well, i’ve been a little tweet out a minute ago, you know, thereby calling like that she’s tweeting while she’s talking to me on the phone. Now, what about that previous guest? I had alice march, the attention factor and that’s that’s not good practice norvig i’m sure you did it on a break. Did it break? But the number to call if you do want to talk to my guest. Gail perry is eight seven seven for eight xero for one, two zero, eight, seven, seven for eight xero for one to zero and gail is the author of fired-up fund-raising turned board passion into action. What else? Gail? Besides the simple and the thing that something that everybody would love to do besides those simple and pleasant, thank you phone calls, how else can we engage board members? That is not a direct solicitation. Well, one of the when i was writing my book, i interviewed a lot of the bank of directors, and one one person just said something so tellingly, she said, if i could just get my board members open doors, that that would make my make my life so much easier, but they are embarrassed about opening doors, and they think it’s all about money, and they won’t do it. And so let’s, let’s give some thought about how boardmember can open doors in a way that is easy for them and playful and fun and is like throwing all their friends onto the bandwagon rather than being stiff and awkward cause you know, i like i like the metaphor of a bandwagon latto boardmember that everybody they know, especially their family and close friends, needs to know that they are very excited about thiscause, and they spend a lot of time on this call, and i’ll tell, i’ll tell boardmember that, um, you know you’re familiar with the concept, of course, of barrel marketing and the notion that ideas are viruses and they spread and hotel boardmember they need to be sneakers everywhere they go, they need to be sneezing on everybody, you know, to spread a cunt contagious epidemic of happy news about the work that they’re organizations doing to make the world a different place, a better place. So that’s just asking them remember, laugh then light back-up thinking they understand the concept of sneezing on everybody, they know if they can do that, so we have to we have to in order to help them sneeze properly. The have found out that board members don’t know what to say. If you really think about the good book, they don’t know what to say and that even boardmember have come to me and they say for when i have a chance to talk to somebody what i talk about, wait before we talk about what it is you want them to say, who is that they should be talking to, well, sneezing on who they need every boardmember even if they say they don’t know any quote, wealthy people unquote, every boardmember has relationship that can help forward their organization, it might be with a church group or a club or a foundation or corporation or maybe they’re wealthy. And what about their co workers? Well, their coworkers too, although sometimes co workers, um, is your employee anyway, sometimes that can be a little touchy. However many businesses adopt causes for their employees to get involved in. Okay, that is part of a team building so it’s, very broad, mostly personal relationships, personal networks, and this is this is a country back-up all the social networks that any one person has. I mean, i’ve got my hairdresser, i’ve got my dry cleaner, you know, i’ve got my extended family, which is very large professional friends, social friends, you know, most of these people know that i’m wildly passionate about a couple of causes and that they’re always invited right now, your advice is your advice, gail is gail don’t matter that’s why they went down to a party it’s a matter of getting boardmember into a different spirit about their call, okay, but what should they be? What should they specific? Find a spirit of inviting people on a spirit of sneezing everywhere, talking about it and not being afraid or embarrassed about talking. And what should they be saying? Gale? What specifically? Well, you know, like the women’s center last night we talked about wait, we did a little bit of messaging, we did it, we did a mingle exercise, and i asked everybody in the room to get up out of his chair and find another boardmember and just tell him why they care so on, and we did that three different times, they find three different boardmember zor four different board members and just shared a conversation that while they cared, and so i think, what a boardmember should talk about it. Why think here about the organization? Because that is an impact statement it’s not specific, it usually doesn’t have programs and services and data, and it has an emotional story that comes from the heart. Give us an example of a statement like that. Well, i believe in the women’s center because alright, i’m involved this organization on the passion about, i think politics for hobby and it’s a pack and, you know, i’m a active democrat and also it’s all fundraisers to be active in. Any politically and either side, because it’s good it’s good, it helps your fund-raising at multiple levels, i’m passionate about the democratic collison selecting women office, and i just believe that when mohr women are in the general assembly of north carolina, we have better laws for children, for victims, for the environment, and women deserve the voice and they need the voice. And so that’s my personal opinion about why i think my organisation is important, okay? And so the women, they’re people, they could say, you know, i’m just so worried because these these homeless women and children are the most fragile people in our society, and they’re right in our backyard, and it breaks my heart to see him, and we really need help and it’s an ideal way of opening a conversation about the organization that you’re so passionate about and bringing more friends to it that’s the whole objective and you know it say, boardmember don’t have to have a big each prepared right. They can just talk about their own personal opinion about what’s important, and they could do that because they’re not going to forget that they might forget the mission statement in the three million marketing messages, but they’ll remember why they care, you know, what’s another way, way, actually, before we move on to the other additional ways, i do wantto put a disclaimer in that gale’s evidence of me. I mean, advice of sneezing is contrary to the centers for disease control recommendations that your sneeze into your elbow that is not. She does not want to seize a terrible shoretz you sneeze openly broadly, and the b aerosol ing your good message throughout the subways and your community do not sneeze into your elbow. Gail, how else again? Thiss to me, i think, is the crux of our whole conversation. Ways specific ways that board members can be engaged. That is not a solicitation. How else? Alright, now two of my favorite ways our host tours and host small social um, i think it’s just thinking your temple non-profit if every single boardmember hosted on event in their home just to introduce their friends to the cause no soliciting, just introduce. Um, just think what networks your organization would open forth for the future. Boardmember, for example, we had a new director of the carolina ballet here in north carolina and almost like a ballet boardmember and i had a porch party to invite introduce people to the new artistic director and it was way had about twenty people who came and forty people invited. And you have a very big porch. Yeah, well, having a big old southern front porch. I have a lot of parties here in new york city. We have a balcony. Party would be a boardmember in the executive director squeezed onto a balcony. It’s about fourteen inches wide deep. But that’s that’s only applies here. Wait. We have a national audience listening, right? Not your we certainly do. In fact, that i have a porch party really goes over well in texas and some of other places i worked. But from that porch party, the ballet got eventually a wonderful new boardmember and a major donor. And it was the first time these people had been introduced to the ballet and i the boardmember didn’t have to do anything. All i had to do was have a little party and tell everybody that needed to meet this hot new gun town. So it was very easy. And it was i wasn’t very one. Self conscious are anything. See, the problem is that boardmember think it’s all about money, they’re not going to do it because they’re energy’s gonna clam up, and they’re going to feel self conscious and awkward, and they’re going to back away it’s, not about money, it’s, about introductions, right? What about making friends? Because even if people can’t give, they may have other relationships they can offer that can open doors. And if you think about the vast possible network that your organization could make use of, its better it’s, good to think in a very broad picture. Yeah, we have to take a break. My guest is gail perry, the author of fired-up fund-raising turned board passion into action. Take this break, please stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s, aria finger do something that orc. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Lively conversation, top trends and sound advice. That’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m lawrence paige nani, author off the non-profit fund-raising solution. Gale, let’s, let’s. Spend our remaining minutes talking about let’s. Get at least just one more idea how boardmember is khun do something fund-raising related. That’s not a direct solicitation. Yeah, something else that i find very helpful. I call it the v i p prospect game. Always like to make everything into a game for boardmember because it’s sounds a little bit more interesting and fun. And you’re gonna explain what the viper prospect game is, right? Okay, no dark in jail today and here’s the but the issue i’m tackling is that board staff always asked the board over and over for names of people and everybody boardmember every boardmember starts to give ten names san and boardmember won’t do it because they don’t know what’s gonna happen to these people after they name has turned our turned him. So what i do as i tell everybody to take out a sheet of paper that they do not have to turn in and just think for a minute, see if they could make a list of up to ten people who could catapult your organization to a whole new level catapults. And i’m not talking about messing around. And on and then i’m quite i give about five minutes and our mind and that these three people could be representative corporations. They could be a state attorneys, they could be government agencies are elected officials, they could be individuals, corporations, foundations, united club social club um, and i try to broaden the basis for the board members to consider all the possibilities of relationships they have, they could catapult their organization, and so i give them practice, right, creating a prospect list and thinking about this without being self conscious, that they have to turn in the name, and then that step one step two is that i asked them to turn to the person next to them and just discuss one of the names on one of their lives. So what i’m doing that there is giving them practice losing from prospect identification to actually considering strategy and it’s, a low key, low pressure exercise that help support members, get them warmed up to the whole idea of thinking big, talking about specific individuals and then moving to strategy of how we can open the door and cultivate a deeper relationship with this entity or this person. And what i do after the exercises that i’ve tried to create a viper task force committee and of the board members to need after the retreat because we used to do this in a retreat for man meet after the retreat and come up with the prospect lift and the staff is going yes, thank you, thank you, thank you, because the staff has been trying to get the board members to do this forever, but the way they were being approached made the board members feel uncomfortable and the board members would back away. So again, you know, master, a playful, lighthearted approach to a topic that can be very scary for people has been helpful. Yeah, we just have about two minutes left. What about board members that aren’t going to jump on board with this? They’re they’re just so let’s call them just difficult board members, they’re not coming on board with these with these ideas. How do we manage those? Well, you know, i started managing my expectations. Um, i think it any board, you’re gonna have a handful of people who are dead weight and if you beat yourself up about trying to get these people at you’ll kill yourself. I just been tryingto tryto keep him quiet on and hope they don’t cause any disruption. And then i’ll pull out my term limits to make sure that we can rotate them off the board. Yes, written term limits, which also need to be enforced. Absolutely latto don’t. Okay, what if eso you you’re really so your advice is just bide your time until the term limit ends, and it could be in the beginning of their term? Well, you know, i think i have a friend who was is in the second director he when he had boardmember you weren’t showing up doing what they needed to do, he would go meet with him and he would say, you know, is there another way you would like to be involved with our organization or serve our cause? Because since you can’t quite do the boardmember job well and i say that, and he said they were relieved because they were feeling guilty. Yes, they felt guilty and didn’t want to let the organization down, and i thought that peer pressure is a huge motivational factor because nobody wants to look embarrassed in front. Of their peers. Everybody wants to do come to that board meeting prepared and having done their list that they said they would do so i find pierre pressure very, very helpful. And so you have to board meetings, have to praise the people who are performing, and you have to honor and recognize them. And i think i think it’s all about motivation and team building. Yeah, we have to leave it there. I’m sorry. Our time is up. My guest has been gail perry, consultant as president of gale perry associates and author of fired-up fund-raising published by widely available on amazon piela one. Thank you very much for being on the show. Thank you. Yeah. Remind people that my web site is gail perry dot com and their lots of articles on resource is there that you can? All right. Thank you very much. Ok, bye, gail. Next week, who needs campaign counsel? Peter panepento walks us through his report on self-funding campaigns. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. And by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we be e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Betty mcardle is our am and fm outreach director. Shows social media is by susan chavez, and this music is by scott stein, here with me next week for non-profit radio, big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great notice. I didn’t say crushing. Hey! What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful posts here’s aria finger, ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com.