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Nonprofit Radio for November 27, 2023: Donor Surveys & People-Powered Movements

Crystal Mahon & Christian RobillardDonor Surveys

You’ll make the most of the donors you have by discovering their potential through surveying. Crystal Mahon and Christian Robillard talk principles, best practices and goal setting. Crystal is with STARS Air Ambulance and Christian is at Beyond The Bake Sale.

 

 

 

 

Celina Stewart & Gloria Pan: People-Powered Movements

This team helps you build more effective and inclusive movements, by encouraging you to think about communications, power and privilege. They’re Celina Stewart from League of Women Voters U.S. and Gloria Pan with Moms Rising.

 

 

 

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I am glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of emphasis if you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate. What’s going on this week? Hey, Tony, we’ve got two convos from 2020 donor surveys. You’ll make the most of the donors you have by discovering their potential through surveying Crystal. Mahan and Christian Robillard talk principles, best practices and goal setting. Crystal is with stars air ambulance and Christian is at beyond the bake sale. Then people powered movements. This team helps you build more effective and inclusive movements by encouraging you to think about communications, power and privilege. There’s Selena Stewart from League of women voters, us and Gloria Pan with moms Rising. These both aired on August 7th 2020 on Tony’s Take two Happy Thanksgiving. Unbelievable were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits. Donor box.org here is donor surveys. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 20 NTC 2020 nonprofit technology conference in 10 made the excruciating decision to cancel the nonprofit technology conference. But we are continuing virtually, you’ll get just as much value. Uh We don’t have to all be close to pick the brains of uh the expert speakers from uh from N 10. My guests now are Crystal Mahan and Christian Robillard Crystal is manager of annual giving at Stars Air Ambulance and Christian is founder and chief podcaster at Beyond the Bake Sale. Crystal Christian. Welcome. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thanks, Tony. Thanks, Tony, great to be here. Uh It’s a pleasure to have both of you. Um You are both in uh in Canada uh Crystal. You are in uh Alberta and Christian. Remind me where you are. I’m in uh beautiful sunny Ottawa, Ontario, Ottawa, Ottawa, the capital, the nation’s capital. Not to be, not to be disputed with Toronto who uh likes to think they’re the capital. I know well, and many Americans think it’s either Montreal or Toronto. Yes. But uh Ottawa capital. All right. I’m glad to know that you’re both well and safe. Um And, and glad to have you both with us. Thanks. Um We’re talking about donor surveys. Your, your NTC topic is uh donor surveys, your untapped data, gold mine. Uh Crystal. Why are surveys? A data gold mine? Well, we had the fortune of launching a survey. We’ve never done one prior to 2016. And when we did it, we were amazed at what we found. So we learned a lot about our donors in terms of their communication preferences. We made money like easily made net on that. And on top of that, we actually ended up learning a lot about time giving prospects and turns out that there were a lot of donors that we had no idea, had named us in their will or were interested in naming us in their will. So there was a lot of revenue like hidden revenue that we were finally getting access to. So that’s sort of where that line is moving here. What’s what it’s referring to? Interesting. I’m, I’m looking forward to drilling into that more because I do plan to giving fundraising as a consultant. Uh And I’m sometimes asked by clients about doing surveys. Um So I’m interested in what you’re doing as well. Um And, and you’re getting uh gifts, you said you’ve made money back from them. So people do send you gifts of cash along with their surveys. Yes, like this year we did uh early because last year 2019, our Stars Ally survey made $300,000 and then that all all the new people that we found for plan giving, like we’re looking at billions of dollars coming into the door in the future for stars. So it’s yeah, to not do a survey just seems like a huge opportunity at this point. Yeah, my good. Did you say billions with a B no millions with an millions? OK. The audio is not perfect. So it almost sounded billions. So I wanted to be sure because I’m sure listeners have the same question. OK. Millions, millions are still very, very good. Um Christian, anything you want to add to about why these are uh such a gold mine for nonprofits? I mean, besides the fact that you’re using data, obviously to reinforce certain decisions and to highlight certain wealth elements, I would say in terms of your sponsorship potential, I know that a lot of organizations are looking more so into the corporate sponsorship, corporate engagement side of things. And I think with your, your donor surveys, you can really reveal a lot around where people are working their levels in terms of uh positions within a certain company or organization. And that can lead you down some interesting paths from a corporate sponsorship perspective. OK. OK. Um Your um your description of the, the, the workshop said that uh you make the most of the donors you already have and it sounds like you, you both obviously are, are are going there, is there anything you wanna add about sussing out the, the, the the value that’s in your uh that, that you don’t know you have among your current donors? Well, from our perspective, like it’s given us an opportunity to get to know our donors better in terms of what, what are they actually interested in learning about in our organization or why are they choosing to give? And it allows us to tailor our messages and just be a lot more personal with them and act like we really know them as opposed to them just being a number in our database. So it really give us an opportunity to really cultivate that relationship and just continue bringing them on board and continuing that relationship with them. Yeah. OK. Um Is, is most of your uh content in the, in the workshop around the best practices for, for surveys? Is that what we’re gonna be exploring? Mostly Christian, feel free to jump in. I would say that we were working a lot at best or best practices then also case studies. So people would have some tangible examples of how to actually launch one but to consider and what they would actually need to do once they go back to their nonprofit actually. Ok. All right. Well, let’s, um, let’s start with like, where, where do you get started? W who, who, who are the best people to send surveys to or, or what types of information are, are you finding or most uh re responded to or what types of questions are most responded to? How can you help us sort of frame uh uh an outline of what we, where to get started? Well, Christian and I talked a lot about building the proper scope of your survey. So, figuring out like, why exactly are you doing the survey? What are you trying to find out? And once you kind of, I guess tailor down exactly what you’re trying to learn or what you’re trying to achieve that can sort of help you figure out who you need to actually reach out to and what demographic or audience you need to build that sort for. Ok. So like starting with your goals, what’s the, what’s the, what’s the purpose of the darn thing? Yes. OK. OK. Um Christian, you wanna, you wanna jump in around, you know, starting to get this process started? Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think uh as crystal and I were kind of building this piece out whether you’re talking about uh more of a philanthropic focus for your survey or whether you’re talking about more of a corporate kind of sponsorship, focus of it. You ultimately want to ask yourself a number of different questions before you can get going things around. What you ultimately want to know about your donor base or about this particular audience population that you’re ultimately looking for. More information on. Why are you doing this in the first place? Is, is this more responsive, isn’t it more of a proactive type survey to uh explore new avenues? What do you ultimately need to know? I think that’s an important element to focus on is not asking everything but asking the right. Things who do you need to ask? So who is the actual population that you’re targeting at the end of the day? Uh What would you do with the information? So don’t just collect information for, for information sake, not that, that’s not important, but what’s the actual actionable pieces for that? And how are you going to protect that information? I think with the today’s sensitivities around, around data privacy, it’s really important for, for charities and nonprofits to steward that data as they would, any type of gift that they ultimately get. Yeah, in terms of the data stewardship that, that might constrain what you ask as well because now you have um uh conceivably a higher level of security that you need to maintain. Absolutely Tony and even just in terms of sensitivities of, of phrasing certain questions, I think it’s important for you to think about how you phrase certain things and how intimate you’re ultimately getting. And if you do get that intimate, like you said, how do you protect that data? But also what’s the purpose for collecting that particular piece of data aside from, well, it might be a nice to have someday instead of this actually contributes towards our, our bottom line. Now you’re doing uh surveys around corporate sponsorship. Uh Right. That’s, that’s the example you mentioned. So you’re, you’re getting to know where people work so that you might use that information for potential sponsorships. Yeah, I mean, when you look at sponsorship. Ultimately, it’s, it’s very much a business transaction. If you look at how Forbes just uh defines sponsorship, it’s very much the cash and in kind fee paid to a property, a property being, whether it’s a charitable run or some type of adventure or conference in this case, um in return for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that property. So you think of any other type of exploitable commercial potential, which is the most buzzwordy definition you possibly could. If you think of any type of advertising medium, whether it’s TV, radio print, you wanna know ultimately who’s in your audience. And one of the best and most effective ways to do that is to conduct some type of survey to really tease out who are some of your very specific or niche audiences in Canada, we say niche. So it’s a bit of a cringe for uh for us up here in the north. But uh having a survey to really tease out who are, who’s in your audience and some of the more behavioral psychographic uh demographic features of that audience are particularly important to, to have to really make a compelling case to, to corporations looking to use sponsorship with your organization. OK. Um What format are you using? Christian Crystal? I’m gonna ask you the same thing shortly. What, how are these offered to people? Yeah. So we, so in the experience that I’ve had, we usually use a survey monkey survey of some kind that allows for a lot of cross tab analysis to be able to say that people who are in between the ages of 18 and 29 have this particular set of income. They have these particular purchase patterns, they care about your cause to nth degree they um are engaged with your cause or with your property and whether it’s through social media or through certain print advertisements or whatever that might be. And we usually collect around 30 plus data points on all of those uh on all of those elements ranging from, again, the behavioral to the demographic, to psychographic to some very pointed specific questions around the relationship between your cause and the affinity um for a certain corporation based on that uh based on not caring for that cause. Yeah. Uh So you said collecting around 30 data points? Does that, does that mean a survey would have that many questions? Absolutely. Oh OK. Now I’ve heard from guests in the past may have even been NTC guests, not this year, but the, you know, the optimal number of questions for a survey is like five or six or so and people bail out uh beyond that point. Yeah. And, and usually before I had actually sent out a survey of that magnitude, I would agree with you, Tony and I would agree with most, I think the, the important differentiators one is that you frame it as it’s very much for improving the relationships and the ability for the, the cause properties, whether that’s your, run your gala, whatever that might be to raise money. And usually the audience that you’re sending that to is very receptive to that. I think you want to frame it also, as you’re only collecting the most important of information. And uh you’re also looking at uh again, like you’re incentivizing it in some way, shape or form. So usually when you tailor it with some type of incentive, be it a $50 gift card opportunity to win something like that, usually people are a lot more are a lot more receptive. And in the time that we’ve done surveys, whether it’s in my, my past days consulting in the space or now doing a lot of work with charities and nonprofits, we’ve sent it to tens of thousands of respondents and you get a pretty, a pretty strong response rate and a really nominal if negligible amount of an unsubscribed rate. So people are not unsubscribing from getting those questions. And in fact, they’re answering a lot of them and an important element as well as making them optional. So not forcing people to have to fill out certain pieces but giving them the freedom to answer whichever questions they feel compelled to. But when you’re doing it for the cause people are pretty, are pretty compelled to respond to those types of questions. Crystal, how about you? What what format are your, your uh surveys offered in? We do both offline and online. So our donor base tends to be a little bit older. So for us, the physical mailing is absolutely mandatory because, because a lot of our donors respond that way. Um But we do also produce an online version for, I guess other parts of our donor base that are in a di different demographic or just based on that person’s preference, just giving them that opportunity. Um But what we did find is that in terms of our offline responses, we had a lower response rate in terms of responses to the survey. But exponentially more donations coming through offline as opposed to online. And then for online responses of the online survey, we had a lot more responses to the online survey but far fewer donations. So we found that there was an inverse relationship there. And I thought that was very interesting. It’s time for a break. Are you looking to maximize your fundraising efforts and impact this giving season? Donor Box. Online donation platform is designed to help you reach your fundraising goals from customizable donation forms to far-reaching easy share, crowd funding and peer to peer options. Plus seamless in person giving with donor box like kiosk. Donor box makes giving simple and fast for your donors and move the needle on your mission. Visit Donor box.org and let donor box help you help others. Now, back to donor surveys. Do you uh subscribe to the same uh opinion about the, the length that there can be up to 30 questions in a, in a survey. As Christian was saying, we personally haven’t practiced that. We usually keep ours between five and 10 questions and sometimes we even tailor it. If we know that somebody is interested in a particular program, we might take out a certain question put in something else related specifically to them. So there is some variability in the surveys, but generally we keep them quite short. But I do agree with Christian for sure in terms of really framing the purpose of the survey. And each of the questions around this is the whole purpose of this is to build our relationship with them and to better serve them and to get to know them better. And I think that really makes a huge difference and then we also do the incentivizing approach as well. So I think that also inspires people to uh I was just gonna ask about incentivizing, OK. Something similar like a, a drawing for a gift card, something like that. Yeah, we get a Stars Prize pack because we wanted to do something that would be specific. They couldn’t get something that they could elsewhere. So, yeah, we, we have started merchandise. So that’s one of our OK. Um I’m gonna thank Christian for not having a good uh a good video uh appearance because this video I’ve done 10 of these today and they’re all gonna be, all the videos are gonna be preserved except this one because Christian um has a very extreme background. It’s really just like a silhouette, a head with headphones is really about all I can see. But um I’m grateful because my background just fell. I have a little Tony, I have a Tony Martignetti if you watch all of these videos, which are gonna be available. Uh There’s a Tony Martignetti nonprofit Radio, um sort of easel, you know, um CEO core, you know, sign and uh it was behind me. Uh It was, and it just fell while uh Crystal was talking. So thank you. Uh Christian. I was just so surprised that you could ask 30 questions on a survey and get some type of uh degree of response. So it, it, it shook my house that I’m 30 data points. What madness is this? I’m so aghast at it. Yes. And then also the fact that the two of you disagree. Um All right. So, but I’m shouting, calling myself out as uh having a, a flimsy background but it lasted through, it lasted through like seven hours of this. I love it. I also say that we don’t necessarily disagree, but I think different surveys serve their different purposes. So I agree with Crystal that in, in that particular case, you only need to send one that has 5 to 10 questions. Whereas in this case, you’re probably sending it to, in, in a sponsorship case, you’re probably sending it to a larger population of people and you only need a certain amount of people to fill it out. So, um, Crystal, I had asked you and you probably answered, but I got distracted by my collapsing background. Uh What, what kinds of incentives do you offer? Uh, we offer Stars price pack. So it’s Stars merchandise. So we wanted to offer something a little bit different other than like a gift card that they could get through any other. Yeah, so that’s all right. Um a different angle for us. Yeah. Personalized to Stars. Ok. Got you. Ok. Um Now was yours specifically uh uh a planned giving survey or did you just have a couple of planned giving questions? And that’s where you discovered this data, gold mine of future gifts and all the wills that you found out that you’re in. It was not, it was not specific to plan giving. So it was more just a general survey. And then we did have a question about plan giving and then we were stunned by the response that we saw in subsequent years. We kept asking that and right now we’re sort of in the middle of doing a whole plan giving strategy and trying to really build that out now that we know that there is this whole core of people that are interested in this and that our donors are open to it. So it’s really opened up a lot of opportunities for us as an organization of all. Yeah. Interesting. Ok. All right. So, you, you learned from the first time this is, you’re in a lot more states than you had any idea. Yeah. Um, le let’s, let’s talk about some more, uh, good practices for surveys. Uh, Crystal. Is there something you can, one or two things you wanna recommend and then we’ll come to go back to Christian. Yeah. One of my major things is that if you’re gonna ask a question, you have to know what you’re gonna do with that data after the fact, like a pet people sign is where people just ask a question to ask a question for whatever reason, but then they don’t action anything out of it. Like to me, it’s very important that if our donors are going to spend the time to actually read through your survey and take the time to respond or mail it in or submit it online that we actually to do something with that information. So whether that’s tailoring future messaging or changing their communication preferences or whatever it is that they’re asking us to do or telling us, I think that’s so important is that you have to have a follow up plan in terms of once these responses come back in, what are we gonna do with them? Who is gonna take action? How are we gonna resource this? How are we going to use this information, I think of um date of birth as, as a good example of that, like if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna develop a plan to um congratulate someone for their birth on their birthday each year, then that can be a valuable data point. Um But if you just, you know, if you’re just asking because you, you know, you don’t have a purpose, you’re just interested in what their age is for some vague reason, then, then there’s no, there’s no value in asking. And if, if it’s just a follow up, if it’s just to know their, you know, when you want to send a card, maybe you don’t need the year, maybe you just need the day in the month. Um But if there’s value to your database for knowing their age and then you would ask the year. Exactly. So it helps you filter down there. What do we need to know? And why are we asking these question? What is the purpose, Kristen? You have a uh uh best practice you want to share. Yeah, I would say consider the not just the population size that you’re not just the population that you’re serving, but also the, the representative makeup. So if you know that your database is predominantly on more of the, the senior side of things, but you’re getting a disproportionate amount of, of more uh individuals who are on the younger side of things in terms of respondents that’s something important that you have to take into account. So the make up of the actual population is um is more important than I would argue than the amount of responses. You can get a crazy amount of responses. But if it doesn’t represent the population that you’re serving and that who make up your donors, it’s, it’s not gonna be valuable data to you. I remember one time we had uh an instance for an organization wanted to uh want to do a survey for sponsorship purposes and in other cases, it’s been for more donor specific like, oh, we’ll just put a note on Facebook or Twitter or something like that. It’s not necessarily your population, it’s not necessarily the group that you’re looking that you’re actively engaged with. Um in a fundraising perspective, you get information to the otherwise and then obviously reflect on that and use that. But um be really clear about the, the breakdown that you need to have in order to make the, the information actually representative of the rest of your database. Um What, what kinds of response rates like? What’s, what’s a decent response rate to a, to a, to a survey? I uh I think it depends what type of server you’re sending. I will, I’ll let Crystal speak to this more, but I’d say if it’s philanthropic, it can vary on the sponsorship side of things you’re looking for. Um a response rate that coincides with a 95% confidence interval with a 5% margin of error. That’s good market data to calculate that. There’s a bunch of big cal complicated formulas that we probably have all repressed from our time. In uh in statistics in uh in university, there’s a, a company called Surveymonkey that actually has a calculator for it. So if you go to the Surveymonkey website, you can actually um just plug in a what the sample size or what the actual size of the, the database you’re sending it to and you can plug in what confidence integral that you want and then what margin of error that you’d like and it’ll pump out a number of a minimum that you need to have. I would say that’s a good starting point. But again, as I talked about before, make sure you have the representative breakup breakdown of uh of who’s actually within your audience reflected in the survey results. And don’t have it disproportionately skewed towards a particular demographic that might be just more inclined to uh to respond to surveys. OK? OK. Um Crystal, anything you wanna add about uh the, the, the confidence it’s, it’s different. But, but yeah, but yeah, that I I withdraw that, that doesn’t make sense for you because you’re doing individual philanthropic surveys. So each response you get is valuable. You find out that someone is interested in plan giving already, has you in their will. That one response has, has great value yes, the purpose of our survey is a little bit different. So we don’t worry so much about that, but I completely agree that the Christian in terms of actually needing to calculate that and being mindful of who you are actually reaching out to with this survey to make sure that the representative of the, that you’re trying to question your survey. What what, what kind of response rate do you shoot for though Crystal? Cause still, you know, these, these things take time and you’re doing some of them are offline. So there’s postage and printing, et cetera. What kind of response rate do you consider good for, for an effort like that in terms of a financial response rate? So what I would clarify that for us, our response to the survey doesn’t necessarily mean a gift and a gift to the survey doesn’t necessarily mean that they responded to the survey. So in terms of number of gifts, we usually aim for between six and 10%. Um But in terms of actual response to the survey, we’ve seen as low as 2% but then as high as 7% depending on the year of the channel. Um So either way, like we have, we’re quite lucky, we have quite a large database. So any of these hands could be 50,000 people or more. So even 2% it is a pretty decent sample and gives us a lot of work to do and a lot of information to build off of? Ok. Ok. Um, for your online surveys, Crystal, are you using surveymonkey also? Did you say I’ve used a couple? We used Surveymonkey last year. Um, it is very user friendly. What I would caution people on is to always read the fine print about whatever price package they’re signed up for because like we discussed for our surveys a lot, a big focus is the financial return on it. So we needed to pick a price plan that involve being able to redirect right from the survey monkey page to our donation form. So you have to be really mindful of things like that. So in some of the basic packages, they don’t allow you to redirect to the donation form and that if you can’t do that, that will really negatively impact your financial return of the number of donations you’re going to see in? Ok. Is there another online tool that you like? Also I used a platform called Response, I believe they’re based out of Sweden or somewhere in Europe. And they were very good to be honest. So and there are some limitations as well with them in terms of what the different packages offer. But right now we’re using Surveymonkey and that’s what we’re sending out our like, for example, like even surveys, we’re sending out the survey Monkey or any of our ST based ones. So that’s what we’re using actively. OK. How about you Christian. Is there another one besides Survey Monkey that, uh, you could recommend? I, I think it just depends on what you’re, you’re looking for Tony. So, if you’re looking for a lot of, let’s say more Q answers, I’d say even a Google form would, would be more than, would be more than acceptable. It really just depends on what functionality you want to get out of. I use Surveymonkey pretty religiously just because it’s like Crystal said, it’s very user friendly. It has the functionality that I need and it’s real and it’s relatively um reasonable in terms of, in terms of price point for what you get. Um It’s also going to depend and it’s up to you to do due diligence on what types of functionality you need. Do you need to integrate with your database versus other software? Do you need certain functionality? Do you actually know how to use a lot of those things? Is there going to be support? And again, like what, what are they going to do with your data? Like do they have access to your data, whether it’s metadata or otherwise? Are there other rules or jurisdictions you have to consider with that, that data privacy? So I use Survey Monkey. But lots of considerations to make. Ok. Ok. Thank you. And um so Christian, why don’t you uh why don’t you lead us out with some uh take us out with uh some I guess motivation, closing thoughts what would you like to end with? Absolutely. I would say from a sponsor perspective, whether you’re a large organization or small organization, the, the riches are in the niches. So to do good sponsorship, it requires good data and it requires those 30 plus data points. But whether you’re a big group or a small group, you can compete at the, the same scale, especially um with the amount of money that’s being spent on cost sponsorship over $2 billion worldwide, which is no small amount of money that’s that you can get access to whether you’re $100,000 a year org or a million dollars plus requires good data. So make sure you’re collecting good data. Make sure you’re clear on uh what you want to use your information for and uh yeah, just be, be diligent in uh in making sure that the, that the data is actually protected. Ok. Um I was, I was, I was gonna let Christian end but since the two of you have such divergent purposes, which is fabulous for, uh it’s great for a discussion, uh, divergent purposes around your surveys. Crystal, why don’t you take us out uh on the, on the philanthropic, the individual donor side? Yeah, absolutely. So, like we were discussing, don’t be afraid to fundraise. Like, just because it’s a survey doesn’t mean that you can’t make money off of it. Your people are supporting you enough that they’re willing to fill out a survey and respond to you, they may be willing to donate as well. And then on top of that, like I said, you, you have to know why you’re asking these questions and what you’re gonna do with that information after. It’s really important in terms of respecting your donors time and the fact that they’re giving you this information, you need to be able to use it and sort properly and safely. And then lastly, I just say, please, please, please test your survey before you actually send it out, send it out to other departments or other people that are not in the midst of building the survey so that you can find out that you phrase things appropriately. You’re actually learning what you want to or the functionality is appropriate. I think that’s just so important because you only have one chance of sending it out. So just make sure that it works appropriately. Ok. Thank you very much. That’s Crystal Mahan Manager of Annual Giving at Stars Air Ambulance. And with her is Christian Robillard founder and chief podcaster at Beyond the Bake Sale Crystals in Alberta. And uh I’m sorry, Crystal, did I just say crystal? Yeah, I know crystal. Say crystal. Crystal. Crystal. Crystal. I know is in Alberta. We don’t make it easy on you, Tony and I, I got through 25 minutes so well. And then it’s a lackluster host. I’m sorry. It’s uh this is who you’re stuck with the Christians in the capital city of Ottawa. Thank you so much, Christian Crystal. Thank you very much. Thanks Tony. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. Happy Thanksgiving. A week late. Can you believe that your lackluster host forgot that last week’s show should have included Happy Thanksgiving. We were doing the show the week before and it never occurred to me and I would say parenthetically it did not occur to our associate producer either. That’s the end of that parenthetical. I’ve always wanted to have an intern so I could have somebody to blame. You’ve heard me say it. Give me an intern, I need somebody to blame but just leave it right there. I have to wish you happy Thanksgiving a week late. I hope you enjoyed past tense. Hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving last week. That’s the best I can do on Tony’s take two. There’s a nice little, uh, whimsical little rhyme. That is Tony’s take two, Kate. Well, um, thank you for putting it on me. But, uh we all know that it was your mistake and it’s ok. We forgive you. Um Tony for forgetting Thanksgiving. Yeah. All right. I’m not sure that, uh, you’re quite gonna get away with that. It wasn’t on you. I, I put it in parentheses in parent. Oh, I, I need an intern so I can blame them on everything. Yeah. Well, you’re not an intern. You’re the associate producer. I put you in parenthesis. I put the I put the blame statement in parentheses. I thought that would be good. Alright, let’s go. Well, we’ve got Buku but loads more time here is people powered movements. My guests now are Selina Stewart and Gloria Pan Selena is senior director of advocacy and litigation at League of Women Voters us. And Gloria is Vice president for member engagement at Moms Rising, Selena Gloria. Welcome. Hello, I’m glad we were able to put this together virtually. It’s good to see both of you. Um And I’m glad to know that you’re each well and safe and in uh either DC or just outside DC. Selina, you’re in DC and Gloria. Where are you outside Washington, Gloria? I am actually near Dulles Airport. So, you know, some people commute from here but because um mom’s rising is a virtual organization. I don’t. And so when people ask me for lunch, I’m always like, ok, it takes a little bit more planning. I have to bend my mind about it. I have to get my body into D CDC. OK. Um Your uh your NTC topic is a revolution is coming top tactics to build people powered movements. Um Selena, would you get us started with this? What, what was the need for the session? Well, I think um I think one of the things is right now it’s all about people power. You know, there’s everything is so politicized right now and I think that there is often a conversation about how people are involved in what, what government actually represents or what the government is representing. So I think that that’s really, really important. Um We also saw like in 2018 more voter turnout mo more voters turning out to vote and things like that. So I think that that also is as part of that people conversation, like what is compelling people to participate even more or at a greater extent than their democracy. But all of these things kind of work together to figure out, not only do we have people engaged now, but what is important? What does community as more people become engaged? Um How does, how does our definition of our community and communities in general change as more people are included and participate in all of those things? So I think that we’re at a very um interesting and crucial moment in time and so people powered and, and people involve movement. It’s, it’s, I think it’s always happened but it’s just a, a coin phrase. I think that’s especially prevalent right now. OK. Um Gloria E even though participation is, is uh is very high, we’re also largely polarized. So how do we overcome the opposite ends of the spectrum to try to bri bring people together and, and, and organize? Are you talking about everyone or are you talking about voters? Uh I’m, well, I’m talking about the country. Uh I don’t know, I don’t know whether I don’t know whether people are voting. Um But I’m talking about our political polarization. I don’t know if they’re necessarily voting. Uh I, they actually talk about voting so I probably threw it off a little bit, Gloria, they act like I’m asking for clarification only because like some of the most talented and I think unifying um politicians in recent memory, for example, Barack Obama did not succeed in unifying all of us, right? So there are some segments of our um citizenry that will just not do it, we will not be able to come together with them. But I think that for um people who really do want the best for our country and who are open minded enough to um want to hear from other people who have different um you know, slightly different ways of looking at the world. It is possible to do it. And um that goes back to what Selena was saying about people powered movements. Um I think that one of the reasons why that’s become more and more of a catchphrase is that um you know, we are in an era of information overload, we are in an era of polarization and um not believing everything that we’re seeing on the internet and in the news. And so being able to actually really connect with people on the ground in person over the phone, but directly and not going through the filter of social media or news movements is, it’s increasingly important and that will be um one of the main channels for us to unify as many people as possible. So, we’re, we’re, we’re talking about uh creating these both online and offline, right? Um Or uh people powered pe people centered movements. Um How Gloria, how do we want nonprofits to think about uh or what do we need to think about in terms of doing this, organizing uh creating these, these movements. Um First of all, it’s about um inclusivity. OK. So um at least from where we sit, um mom’s rising and me speaking on behalf of mom’s rising right now, um We want to make sure that whatever we do and if its the most people and harms no one at all, if possible. Um So that’s one part of it, how we speak, how we communicate to make sure that what we’re speaking and how we communicate does not reinforce that stereotypes that creates divisions. OK. That’s one way. Um Another way, not way, but another thing to consider are also the tools that we’re using. Um Are we using, you know, people are on, on different kinds of communication tools, some people um only do Facebook, other people only do um email. Um And there are also like text messaging. There are all of these new com communication schools tools coming on and being on top of the different tools is super important because we need to meet people where they are um those are just a couple of thoughts. Ok. Um So we, so Selena, so we’re talking about diversity equity inclusion. Um Let, let’s drill down into a little of the like, what do we, what do we need to do around our communications? That is more equitable and non harming. So I think that’s an important question and that’s definitely something that has been centered um in the league’s work over the last I would say five years, but more intentionally over the last two, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, whose work the league? I’m sorry, I always refer to the league, women voters, women, voters, us. OK. The leagues were at the league. Sorry, folks. The that the full title is just too long for me to keep saying. So I just referred to it as I got you now. All right. So de I is, is very, very important. Um for us, you know, our organization has historically been older white women. We’ve al always had members of color, but I don’t know that they were always at the forefront. So for us, our work is really centered in two questions and in everything that we’re doing, who’s at the table and who should be at the table, who’s missing. So I think starting all of our conversation and the efforts that we’re doing with those two questions allows us to center our work in diversity, equity inclusion and also use our power as um people who have had access to legislators, stakeholders, etcetera. How do we use our power in a, in a way that allows access and inclusivity for more people. So I think that that is really important and something that D I diversity equity inclusion work is hard. Let me just say it’s not easy, you know, it, it gets very uncomfortable. A lot of times when you’re talking about privileged patriarchy and all of the, we have to talk about as it relates to D I. But it’s so important to get comfortable and being uncomfortable and having these conversations is the only way I think that we can start to build a bridge towards unifying. Um because at the end of the day, we may be politically, but at the end of the day, we all share many of the very same values which is historically united this country. Like right now, we’re in the midst of the Coronavirus. The Coronavirus doesn’t care whether you’re a Republican Democrat, black, white female male. It does, it doesn’t matter. Um At the end of the day, we all have to make sure that we’re doing what we can to be safe as individuals, but also our actions greatly impact the people around us. So it’s more of a, it’s more of a community mindset that’s required in order to tap this down. So I know that that’s like a little offset offshoot from what we’re talking about. But I think it all plays together in some way, shape or form? Ok. Um Gloria, how about, how about uh for mom’s rising? I mean, how do you ensure that your communications are equitable and, and non harmful? Um Well, mom’s rising um has very intentionally built an organization that tries to bring different voices to the table. We are intersectional and we are multi issue. And so from our staff, um we’re very diverse in many, many different ways And from the way that we um choose which issues to work on, we also take into consideration um which communities are being impacted. Um And um how we communicate about those and then the way that we um campaign is that our, our campaigns are always overlap. And so there are different people within the organization as well as the partner, policy partners from different issue areas. They help us um vet our issues and in the way that we communicate with them to make sure that, you know, there are um we’re not communicating in a way that, that, that um excludes communities reinforces that stereotypes. Um and raises red flags makes, make, make people feel bad in ways that we don’t understand because of where we individuals as campaigners know. So everything we do is very thoroughly vetted through many different filters. OK. So vetting. Yeah. So please, yeah, Selena, I totally agree with um what Gloria said and I think that’s really important because the league is also multi issue and and kind of has that you have to compete when you have multiple issues, you sometimes have to think a little differently about how you present yourself on each issue in order to not negatively impact the whole set of what you’re trying to accomplish. And so for us in the communication space, um expressly is thinking about whether it’s appropriate, who’s the appropriate messenger when we’re communicating. So, is it appropriate for the league to be a leader in this space or do we need to take a step back and be a supporter? Um So I think that’s one of the things that’s very important for us, communication wise is we’re figuring out what is, what space are we gonna take up in the communication space and how we’re going to communicate this issue? And then the other piece is who’s talking, who is the person that we’re putting in front to actually speak about a particular issue? And is, is that the right person? And are they speaking from the, the lens that’s most appropriate for that particular issue that’s gonna be impacted most as a result of what you’re saying you’re doing? So I think that’s very important. What Gloria lifted up. How do you manage the, the conflicting issues? If, if you know, I, I guess it, I guess there are issues where you have a large constituency on one side of one issue, but something else may seem contrary to that to that large constituency, a different issue that you’re taking a stand on is that, is, that is my understanding, right? When you say, you know, potential issue conflict. Um Yeah, well, when you have a hun 500,000 members and supporters and you’re in every congressional district, everybody’s not gonna agree on, on how to approach an issue. But I think what grounds the league is our mission, our mission is to empower voters and defend democracy, empower people to defend democracy. So I think as long as you stay rooted in what your mission values um statement is, then you can find some reconciliation across, you know, the most seemingly divergent issues. OK. Climate climate change, I think would probably be a good example. I was, I was gonna add, OK, that um just to step back a little bit, the one thing that I am super, super proud of um is that um at least for progressives, I think that we’re actually pretty consistent and about our agreement on issues, we may have um different levels of intensity in what we agree with. But I think that there are very few conflicts. We may not agree on how to get somewhere, but we all agree on where we want to go. OK. So in that way, I, I rather feel at least from um mom’s rising standpoint, we rarely get, I can’t even think of a single instance where we have conflicts because we are not agreeing with each other or with policy partners on the most important thing where we’re heading. Uh So I think that’s a difference because our, the league is, is not um left or right leaning. We’re kind of, we have members who are both conservative and liberal have some of that conflict more in that. But I think you’re absolutely right. Do we all want the same things and a, a healthier, more vibrant democracy? Absolutely. So you have to find some common ground in that space, but we definitely have members who are, who want to handle things one way versus the other. We have to find common ground. Yeah, that, that’s the challenge I was trying to get at. Yeah. OK. It helps. At least it helps me to think of an example like climate change, you know, some, there are some people who don’t even believe that it’s, it’s human impacted and there are others who think we’re decades behind and in, in our inaction to, to uh reverse the effects of human induced climate change. So, um yeah. Uh it’s uh that’s, that’s quite a challenge really, Selena. Um OK. Well, where else, where else should we go with these people? Powered movement ideas? You, you, you, you two spend a lot more time studying this than I do. Uh So what, what else should we be talking about? That? We haven’t yet. I would actually love to hear from Selena how the league is dealing with um doing your work remotely. I know you guys are already virtual. This is like no, no sweat for you guys, right? Well, you know, I mean, we, we do have, you know, our plans range from virtual all the way down to the grassroots, right? And I think um especially for organizations like your Selena, we share the um the, the, the common goal this year of, of voter engagement. I am very sorry. What’s real life like I do it like if I open the door family, my kids might come in. I’m gonna let her out. I’m very sorry. All right. So, you know, um in terms of remote working, but yeah, but how it relates to this topic of people power. Yeah. So I think that’s really, really important and we’re definitely, so it’s, it’s one thing to convert to um teleworking, right? That’s one thing. But when your work is so much advocacy um and especially the leaders on the ground who are doing voter registration, which requires you to be on the ground talking to people, you know, that has shifted our work. So, one of the examples that we have is we have our People Powered Fair Maps campaign, which is basically um trying to get redistricting reform for across the country in a positive way that we don’t have another situation like we had in North Carolina where you’re from Tony and also in Maryland. So we wanna, we wanna make sure that you know, people are represented appropriately, but a lot of the states that we’re working in, they have signature collection campaigns going on right now. So how do you do signature collection when you can’t actually be within three or 6 ft of people? So now many of our um leagues are converting to digital signatures and going through their legislator to make those adjustments so that they can still collect signatures and meet that need, et cetera. Our lab, we have a lobby corps which is 21 volunteers that goes to the hill every month. Obviously, with the hill being uh also teleworking, it created what we thought might be a barrier. But now our lobbies are doing virtual coffee meetings on Zoom just like this and having those conversations with uh legislators, legislative staff and all of those things. So I think that the Coronavirus has forced us to do our work in a different way, but it’s also been great to innovate and be creative and do the work that people love just in a different way. So we, it’s not perfect. I don’t even wanna make you think that this is perfect because it’s definitely not. But I think that uh there’s a lot of positive energy about doing our work and finding ways to do our work in different ways which OK, thinking creatively, you know, II I for our, for our listeners and I don’t, I don’t want to focus just on moms rising and league of women voters us. Uh I want them to recognize how, what we’re talking about can be applied by them. Are they, are they what they need to go back to their CEO S or whatever vice presidents, whoever and what, what kind of like discussion items they need to be putting forward that the organization is not now thinking about uh in terms of, you know, again, people power say a revolution is coming. Um You know, how, how, how can our listeners help create it? I think just becoming involved, like when you’re talking about people powered anything, it’s really about base building. And for me, the goals of base base building are always to, to grow a base of volunteers who have a shared value of some sort. And you’re coming together in order to, to make some progressive movement on that. It’s also about leadership development, um communities and constituency who turn out who are players in, in this issue or what have you and then putting issues to the forefront. So I think that wherever you, what do you value, what’s important to you? Um It could be as simple as, hey, there’s a pothole in my street that hasn’t been fixed in the last year. Can we come together as a community and really talk with our local election officials about making sure our streets are in a position that’s not gonna wreck our cars or um have someone get endangered in some way. So I think it comes down to as on an individual level, what is important to you, what do you value and finding and connecting with those people who also value something similar? And what do you want to change? What is it that you’re trying to change or that would make your life better and who are the people who can support you in getting that done? OK. And that’s consistent with what you said on an organizational level too. Uh the same, you know, what, what are the core values? That’s what, that’s what drives all the work. Uh And, and brings people together just finding that commonality around whether it’s the pothole in the street on the individual level or whatever, whatever you, whatever your part. Yeah, Gloria, what, what, what’s your advice for how people can contribute to this revolution? Um I think that right now um we’re all sitting in our homes and we’re rethinking the way that we do our work and even as individuals, um we’re rethinking the way that we are doing our activism. I think that a very important message right now for activists personally and for organizations that organize activists and try to recruit and build the base is that now is not the time to step away now. More important than ever. It is important to stay on top of the issues, to sign those petitions, to speak up and to share your stories because I will give you a very, very specific example. Right now, Congress is um negotiating, arguing over all of these different critical needs in the Coronavirus relief bills. Right? Well, mom’s rising has been on the forefront of um trying to influence those negotiations and the most powerful weapon we have are your stories, people’s stories. Um What’s gonna happen to your childcare center that has to close down what’s gonna happen to uh domestic workers who suddenly don’t have a paycheck um paid family leave. This is something this is a uh a signature models rising issue. We’ve been working on that forever ever since our founding. It’s one of our signature issues. But now um because of the stories that we have gathered and we are hearing from our members about the need for paid leave and the fact that if we had had paid leave all this time, that the burden of Coronavirus would have been much lighter. This is something that we are powerfully bringing to the negotiating table and we are actually seeing we’re going on paid leave. So all organizations and all individuals, whatever issues that you’re working on do not step away continue to share your stories because those stories have to be brought to the negotiating table for policy. And that’s the only way we’re going to get the policy that we need. Ok, we’re gonna leave it there. That’s uh that’s quite inspirational. Thank you. That’s uh that’s Gloria Pan Vice President of member engagement engagement at mom’s rising and also Selena Stewart, senior director of advocacy and litigation at the League of Women voters, us. So, Gloria Selina, thank you very much. Thanks for chatting. Thank you, Tony. Next week, the Thanksgiving Show. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits donor box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m the associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. You’re with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for June 19, 2023: Feasibility Studies: What, Why & How

 

Brian AbernathyFeasibility Studies: What, Why & How

If a capital, endowment or other campaign may be in your nonprofit’s future, you’ll want to consider a feasibility study beforehand. Brian Abernathy, from Convergent Nonprofit Solutions, explains what they’re all about.

 

 

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[00:00:53.31] spk_0:
Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite he Abdominal podcast. I’m still traveling without my studio mic. So my sound won’t be up to par. It’ll be back to normal next week. And I’m introducing my niece Carmella as our sponsor announcer this week. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into trypanosomiasis. If you infected me with the idea that you missed this week’s show feasibility studies, what, why and how if a capital endowment or other campaign, maybe in your nonprofits future, you’ll want to consider a feasibility study beforehand. Brian Abernathy from Convergent non profit Solutions explains what they’re all about on Tony’s take too classy digs non profit radio.

[00:01:14.17] spk_1:
We’re sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org.

[00:01:57.82] spk_0:
Here is feasibility studies. What? Why and how? It’s a pleasure to welcome Brian Abernathy to nonprofit radio. He is General Manager at Convergent non profit Solutions where he has supervised and managed capital campaigns that have raised more than 100 and $25 million. The company is at convergent non profit dot com and Brian is on linkedin. Brian Abernathy. Welcome to nonprofit radio.

[00:02:00.54] spk_2:
Thanks tony. Great to have the opportunity to join you today.

[00:02:13.07] spk_0:
I’m glad you can. Thank you. Let’s talk about feasibility studies. Let’s before we get into the how and the why, which actually will do the why and the how, but before we even do the why and the how, let’s talk about the what, what, what are we talking about? Feasibility studies?

[00:02:39.09] spk_2:
Yeah. So a feasibility study, tony, you could boil it down very simply to a strategic due diligence. Before a major funding initiative in capital campaign. That’s the context of feasibility study. The convergent manages and works with our clients on it’s not a will this new building attract the right market of folks? That’s a different type of study, researching utility. What we’re talking about here is, can this program of work raise the necessary amount of money? And are we confident that we’ve got the right dynamics to go out and execute a successful capital campaign to secure that

[00:03:09.00] spk_0:
funding? Do we need to know what our goal is going into the feasibility study or have a working goal or I mean, surely the study is going to refine that? But do we need to have a ballpark of what we’re, what we’re looking for?

[00:04:22.18] spk_2:
Yeah, within reason, we always say it’s good to think big in a feasibility study. When we go into this process, the the proposed program of work that we’re gonna take out and use in confidential interviews. We refer to that as a draft prospectus. So it is a working document uh primarily because we want everyone we meet with to know that their feedback can still shape that plan. But it also gives us the opportunity to test different aspects of the goal amount and the utility of that funding. So we know we might need to do a building campaign for instance. But do we want to also test the prospect of some endowment to underwrite the long term maintenance of that building? Now, that’s obviously gonna bring the funding goal up. We can test all of those things in the study. We will come back and recommend a specific goal range for a camp pain, but it’s always easier to bring that number in a little bit after a study than to realize, oh, we should have, we should have tested the endowment for the building, but we didn’t think about it in advance. So we want to think with a, what could we possibly need to execute this plan? Uh and, and reference that number as our proposed goal during the feasibility

[00:04:51.34] spk_0:
process? Okay. So, so a part of it is getting feedback on the proposed

[00:05:12.77] spk_2:
goal. That’s right. That’s right. Did people get sticker shock? If, if most of the folks that we talked to see a number in their eyes get really wide and they start to sweat in the interview that tells us it may be a little bit ambitious and sometimes they’re really easy ways to resolve that. Maybe there’s a piece of the program like an Indie that we can just quietly approach in the appropriate individual conversations. But sometimes it is a recommendation of you might want to look at phasing how you go about this so that you can get the necessary funding and just look at a longer horizon of time and potentially a couple of campaigns or more to bring that funding.

[00:05:37.96] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. All valuable info. All right. Um And, and how many folks are we, are we talking to typically? How does that work?

[00:06:07.38] spk_2:
So, excuse me, on average, we’re going to interview between 55 65 participants in a feasibility study process. We typically are going to do three weeks of in person interviews. That number obviously varies a little bit depending on the specific client, the geographic scope. If you’ve got a statewide campaign, it’s hard to get to all the right folks, maybe in a three week period. But we want to talk to the highest capacity, most influential stakeholders for whatever the nonprofit is that we’re working with, uh and get their bearings on where this proposed program of work and potential capital campaign might be headed.

[00:06:31.57] spk_0:
Does it have to be a capital campaign? Can it, can it be a programmatic campaign that we’re doing a feasibility study for or strictly an endowment campaign.

[00:07:22.80] spk_2:
Yeah, that’s a great question. And a lot of folks hear the words capital campaign and think, oh, we don’t need a new building so we don’t need a capital campaign. When we talk about a capital campaign, we speak more about the funding strategy and infrastructure. So it’s a focused initiative to fund a multi year program of work. It may be 100% programmatic. It may be 100% building capital. We’ve got a couple in process right now that are 100% endowment focused. We worked with the boys and girls club in Kentucky last year. That was all of the above. It was retrofitting a building that have been provided to them, funding the operation and utility of that building and its staff for a five year period of time and also putting into place an endowment to fund the maintenance and upkeep of that building. So a little bit of both, but when we say capital campaign, we certainly are not exclusively talking building capital.

[00:07:45.75] spk_0:
Okay, cool. Alright. So let’s move to the y what, what, what’s the value of doing a feasibility study? What are you gonna get out of it?

[00:09:26.25] spk_2:
Yeah. So the old adage of, of counting the cost before you start to build a tower plays in perfectly here, we’re going to approach the study and there’s a few key factors that we’re looking to validate. We need to know that there is a sense of urgency for whatever the need is that this program will work is going to address. We need to know that it’s being conveyed in a compelling way that those who hear about the need and then hear about the solution to that need are gonna be compelled to step in and be involved. We want to know that the right leadership is ready to step up for that campaign and this comes in two factors, tony, um One is just the right influence. Fundraising is a game of relationship strategy goes a long way. But if you don’t know anyone in a community and have all the best strategy, you’re probably not going to get the right doors open. So we want to vet out who would the best possible leaders be from a volunteer influence standpoint in the campaign. And the second piece of leadership is funding leadership, are we able to identify viable prospects ready to step in and play significant roles in terms of their investment in whatever this campaign will be implementing, knowing that we’re able to set the right perspective for the top of that uh donor pyramid or what we call an investment range tape. We’re specifically looking for a way to identify the top level potential supporters for a campaign knowing that that’s gonna set the peak where everybody’s gonna look too. So uh let

[00:09:46.06] spk_0:
me just flush out some of these So, so you can identify uh top potential campaign leadership and also top potential donors through a feasibility study.

[00:10:55.94] spk_2:
That’s right. So every single interview that we’re in, we’re gonna ask a number of questions focused on these two factors. And we’re gonna come out with a recommended list of key campaign cabinet and volunteer leaders for each campaign that we conduct a fees ability study. On, in most cases, we’re actually gonna have a drafted organization chart of different prospect divisions and leaders that we believe are gonna have influence with those different pools of individuals, organizations, foundations, whoever it may be, uh what that tells us is, we’re gonna have somebody with the right set of keys to open the doors that we need to get to and then getting a little bit further down the road into a campaign. We’re able to make the strategic highest and best use of each volunteer’s time because we know volunteers and fundraising efforts generally have day jobs and a lot of other things drawing on their time. So that’s critical intel, it’s for any nonprofit going into a funding initiative, especially a major funding initiative like a capital campaign because you just don’t want to churn and wear out your volunteers on a campaign that runs, you know, 18 months, two years, three years, folks just really start to get exhausted. So we, we map all of that out to inform a leadership strategy for the campaign.

[00:11:37.63] spk_0:
Okay. Uh So So, so far, we’ve talked about a need and a compelling purpose that’s gonna move people. Um you know, the, the value you get out of this, the leadership, the volunteer leadership for the campaign structure, the donor leadership. What else, what, why, why else do these do a study?

[00:12:14.42] spk_2:
Yeah. So in that donor leadership reference point, we do reverse analytics on every campaign that we complete. So when we look at non profit sectors or whatever the case may be, we’ve got a general idea of, we need to find a top pledge of X percent of the overall campaign goal. And our top five need to be the next percentage in the top 10 and so on and so forth. So we’re strategically modeling out a highly, highly reliable perspective on this is the funding mix that needs to be in place so that a campaign can be successful. So

[00:12:42.66] spk_0:
in these interviews, you’re, are you coming right out and asking folks, what, what, what, what do you see your participation as in this campaign that, that we’re talking about or do you, are you proposing, you’re proposing dollar amounts for each interviewee or we’ve got a, are you getting at this, this, this potential campaign contribution? Yeah,

[00:14:16.75] spk_2:
we’ll take the test goal and break it down into a funding chart just to show a visual of, we use around numbers. If we’ve got a $10 million campaign goal, we need a 15% lead pledge that would be a million and a half dollars. And so we do a couple of things. We ask every interviewee, who do you think could be up here potentially at the top ranges of this, of this pyramid? So who might be that million and a half dollar lead or a couple of folks at half a million below that? And, and in these candid confidential conversations, folks will say, oh, so and so would be great or this foundation or that family, you should try to talk to them. Uh The other thing that we do after that is we ask each interviewee if the right leaders were engaged in this campaign and if you had the right confidence in the case for investment, but where do you think from a low to high range your organization or family or whoever it is might land in terms of a potential investment? So it’s all very hypothetical based on the very the conversation, we’re very clear, it’s not a commitment to funding, but the majority of the time because we’re the third party outside person who is not putting a pledge card in front of them, asking them to sign it in this conversation, they’ll give us that range and sometimes it’s pretty broad within appropriate reason based on questions the interview you may still have. But it helps us to know both for those individuals and also for some industry and community subsets of peers where we might expect to be able to find the, for the campaign

[00:14:39.40] spk_0:
when you ask who might be at this, this top level, the 15% of the goal, do people ever say? Oh, I could do that

[00:14:41.93] spk_2:
in some cases? Yes. Does that happen a great way to identify a potential?

[00:14:48.03] spk_0:
Yeah. I mean, if they self identify, yeah. Say there’s no better way but that, that happens. People say, oh, I could do that. Yeah.

[00:15:48.57] spk_2:
Yeah. And especially when you’re talking buildings and you’re talking about naming opportunities, which we would of course address in a feasibility study. If there is a building in play, you get to have a whole another set of conversation to follow down of what might be more most appealing in terms of naming this facility to honor the memory of your mother or whoever the case may be. Now those are confidential conversations. So we’re using that to inform strategy moving on down the line in the campaign. Uh But we do not share that information. So we assure them that they’re never gonna see a report that says Bob and Susie really want to be the lead pledge and name the whole facility. We, we still work through the process, honor the reality that they may have other things they need to vet out and validate before they’re ready to finalize that commitment. But we’ve got a pretty good idea from that conversation, how we would want to approach them when in the campaign timeline, we might want to approach them and even what leaders would be most influential to garnering their pledge because we also asked them who they think would be the best leaders.

[00:16:37.22] spk_1:
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[00:17:19.90] spk_0:
Now back to feasibility studies. What why and how? Okay. Very interesting. So if you’re, if you’re a client, the non profit asks, well, who is it that stepped up? What makes you so confident uh that we can get this? We have a very good prospect for this 15% leadership gift. And who are they? You, you, you can’t say it’s Bob and Susie. Uh

[00:18:34.56] spk_2:
We don’t know, we probably could, we choose not to. Um because it, it is one of those factors that helps ensure that we’re getting the most candid and direct feedback out of those interviews. Uh What we do provide is a perspective of we’re highly confident that these folks should be considered in this range of potential investment or we believe based on prior conversations, this family could be a great naming target. Most of the time, tony with a nonprofit that’s highly connected and engaged with their constituents. They’ve already got a pretty good idea of who those folks are. So it’s not common that we get a complete surprise out of that and more often than not, we’re going into those interviews, uh sort of ferreting out. We think this person could have interest in naming a facility or, or stepping up and taking a key leadership role. So prior to even getting into interviews, we’ve gone back and forth several rounds with the list of interviewees getting all the background information on all the perspective from our client. What’s their past giving history look like and so forth? So we’ve got a pretty good starting point that we’re, we’re strategically approaching those conversations and when we find that potential lead pledge that we weren’t expecting, we’re thrilled. But, but most of the time we’ve got a pretty good idea where those need to come from before we even start the interviews.

[00:19:23.12] spk_0:
This sounds very much like an art. I mean, these, these face to face interviews or whatever zoom or, you know, however they’re done. But these interviews, it sounds like you get one shot, have a serious conversation with a donor or an individual donor or foundation or maybe it’s a couple, you know, it’s got to be it just sounds like an art. I mean, you got to be organized, you have to have the story complete. I think, I don’t know, it looks bad. I think if you come back and, well, you might say we have some follow up questions, I guess I could see that. But it seems to me you get one shot to do it really well.

[00:20:28.03] spk_2:
Yeah. And you’re exactly right. Tony. Most of these folks don’t have hours and hours of time that they want to give over a number of weeks or months to have following. So we’re very strategic. We developed a questionnaire that we use for each client and some of those questions are our standards. Some of those are obviously very unique to the client situation. But we’ve also got a team of consultants, most of whom are former uh sea level nonprofit executives. And so there’s a lot of intuition that comes into play here of if somebody says something about one initiative and a program of work that makes some interest, we may chase that thought a little bit more, uh We may push a little bit harder for what we would call the financial indication in some interviews and other places we may back off. So there’s a lot of nuance in how those conversations

[00:20:31.03] spk_0:
play out. All right. So let’s, let’s keep pulling on this thread about what you’re gonna get out of it, the, the value, why, why do it

[00:21:46.55] spk_2:
so the, if you want to think about value in terms of a simple deliverable, uh We’re gonna prepare what we call an opportunity, analysis report and recommendations and that’s gonna give um the objective responses that we collect did some quantitative, some qualitative, we’re gonna analyze those. We’re gonna give you perspective on the trends in the feedback that we got. And then it’s gonna give specific recommendations on next steps. Very, very rarely. Tony. Is that next step? A cold and hard? No, go on a campaign. Sometimes it is a bad time for an organization to step into a campaign. Most of the time there is specific work to be done to prepare for a campaign or we’re going into a campaign pretty swiftly. Some of that is the shelf life on these reports. We think of it about a 92 120 day times fans. Um The, uh we know from the pack last few years, a lot can change in three months. So sitting and waiting and considering, should we go forward? Should we not on the side of a non profit can be risky in some

[00:21:57.51] spk_0:
cases. Let me ask you what, what might some of that work be that has to be done first? If it’s not a, it’s not a hard, let’s go. We’re 100% or where you can never be. 100% were 95% confident. But if you’re not at that point, what might some of that work be that needs to be done first.

[00:23:57.83] spk_2:
So generally, it’s gonna fall into one of three specific subsets that we focus on. And we’ve got a principle we talked about it convergent called Asking Rights and Asking rights is the intersection of your nonprofits credibility. Uh The clarity of the outcomes that it delivers through the work that it does not the outputs or the activity, but the true bottom line impact and then fundraising skill. So we’re gonna look at those three dynamics through the interviews and we may come out of a feasibility study process and say your credibility is not quite where it needs to be. And so we need to take some focused time to cultivate messaging, to engage your constituency, get the right leaders committed, maybe do some board work to get them ready to step in and be active. Sometimes this can take place in the foundational phase of a capital campaign. Sometimes it takes a little bit more time on the outcome side. Generally, we’re gonna address this through something we call program refinement early in a campaign engagement where we’re taking that draft plan from the study were sharpening it up. We’re answering the questions that we heard, adding some specificity and really, really working on developing what we call an organizational value proposition, which is how we would convey the the true outcomes and economic value that whatever the nonprofit is we’re working with is delivering in their community. Uh And then the last piece is the fundraising skills. So in some cases, we’ve got a great plan, we’ve got the right outcomes. But the fun fundraising infrastructure to go out and execute on the campaign is just not there. And so one of the common engagements that we work with clients on in that space is a multi month resource development strategy engagement where we’re addressing and building out some of those fundraising infrastructure points so that when the time does get there to turn on a capital campaign, the organization is ready to move forward

[00:24:28.21] spk_0:
smoothly. Meanwhile, though the clock is ticking on the value of the the study, you said what you said 9200 and 20 days is that I don’t mean to put words in your mouth. Is that right?

[00:24:34.82] spk_2:
That so

[00:24:51.09] spk_0:
three, so 3 to 4 months, you see uh after that, the landscape could have changed from the conversations that you had time is ticking while you’re trying to do this sort of fundraising infrastructure work. That’s

[00:25:27.40] spk_2:
right. So if we end up with a longer term engagement, uh that, that were involved in what we’re gonna do is maintain the reference points to know what factors we need to see, shift to be prepared for moving into a campaign. If we get beyond that horizon, we’ve got the perspective from the critical interviews that we conducted in the study and we would just roll what we call some re interviews into the early stages of the capital campaign to get some re validation and affirmation. One of those findings adjusted and that’s usually somewhere in the neighborhood of, you know, 6 to 10, maybe 12 key conversations. And once we validate yet, we still got the right leaders, we still have the affirmed support of some of those lead prospective donors or investors. Then we’re confident to move forward with the rest of the recommendations as we had previously

[00:25:48.10] spk_0:
identified. Okay. Okay. Anything else on the value proposition part, what we’re going to get out of this study? Why we’re doing it?

[00:26:13.92] spk_2:
Yeah, the, the last big pieces that campaign strategy and timeline. So we’re gonna give specific recommendations on the scope of campaign. What we believe a high to low feasible goal range is gonna be the number of months that we believe it’s going to take you to manage a campaign. Uh And then if that client is interested in working with us, we’re also recommending the level of campaign management or council from our side that we believe would be most conducive to their success, given their community size, size of their organization and staff and so forth.

[00:27:03.95] spk_0:
So now we have this, we have this report, I guess it’s, it’s also typically a presentation to the board and the C Suite leadership imagine, but also written report. Um Now then folks can take that report and go off and I don’t know, try they can try to try the campaign on their own. I’m sure they’re free to engage convergent, which, which you would love, you’d love to do that work. Uh, or they can do, they could hire some other firm, I guess.

[00:27:06.81] spk_2:
Right. Yeah, that’s right. So, every now and then we will do a campaign where another firm did a study. It’s not all that common and vice versa. It’s not all that common that we would do a study and another firm would come in and manage a campaign just because you can imagine there’s such a depth of institutional knowledge and connectivity that comes

[00:27:38.66] spk_0:
connection. You had somebody else did the interviews and now you’re executing, you’re going back and getting serious about soliciting volunteers, leadership soliciting gifts, but you don’t have the, you don’t have the connection. That’s right.

[00:28:27.79] spk_2:
Right. All right, you do get engaged periodically with an organization that’s got a strong development staff. We’ve got a few repeat clients in this vote. They are prepared to and understand what is involved in going out and raising the money. But they always want third party objective feedback out of the feasibility study. So they’re getting perspective on how do we do over the past X number of years in communicating with our constituents. How is our leadership seen in the community? Who would be the right leaders is the goal feasible? Now again, we’re not divulging the specific feedback from interviewees in these engagements, but we still say, hey, yes, we, we believe this goal range is a pro for you to pursue uh and so on and so forth. But they’re doing that based on aggregate data. Whereas if were retained to manage a campaign, we have the benefit of all of that very specific and nuanced feedback from interviews that our team members would draw on throughout the campaign to, to guide strategy and next steps with, with the different prospects that we may have interviewed.

[00:29:18.23] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Um So let’s, let’s stick with, you know, I want to the nuts and bolts of this, of this uh feasibility study. Um How do we, who schedules the, who schedules the meetings? Is that, is that the nonprofits responsibility? Now, we’ve got this list of, you said, typically, I think 50 to 65 interviews. Um you know, who’s who, what’s the mechanics of moving forward? Yeah.

[00:30:33.89] spk_2:
So we will have on average between 55 65 interviews that’s gonna come from a list of normally around 120 or so interviewees. We know we’re not gonna schedule everybody we want to meet with, but we want to get critical mass of feedback. So we start with a list expecting some folks won’t be available. What we have found a over time and time continues to affirm a schedule er, from the nonprofit organization is far more successful in securing these interviews, especially with your higher influence, higher capacity interviewees. Just because it’s a name and a and a number or an email address that they recognize the, the email from convergent non profit solution is not incredibly likely to get a response when asking for a meeting. If any, if anyone’s like me, they get a number of those emails every day from somebody uh selling wares or offering something. And so we want to build from a place of strength in the scheduling. So we start with a representative of the organization. Usually we give about a two week lead time for scheduling and then our average feasibility study is going conduct interviews over a three week period. That person may have a little bit of scheduling work to do over the first couple of weeks, just filling in the gaps. But typically that, that schedule, er, is 2.5, 3 weeks ish of their time making some phone calls and following up on emails.

[00:31:02.20] spk_0:
And what are they asking folks to participate in? Uh, you were, the insiders are calling it a feasibility study or you even have a different phrase that you call it uh

[00:31:03.56] spk_2:
opportunity,

[00:31:04.81] spk_0:
opportunity analysis. But what are we using for? Our, our interviewees are potential interviewees? What are we calling it? What are we, what are we saying? We’re asking them to agree

[00:32:12.93] spk_2:
to, we send a letter over the signatures of a few key leaders that are affiliated with the organization explaining why we are there that we absolutely not asking for funding. We’re seeking candid confidential feedback on the proposed plan that is attached to that letter. So we’re giving them an opportunity to see what we want to talk about before the meeting. Uh Partly so they know, but also so they’ve had an opportunity to digest it and come up with questions before we walk into the room and we tell them it’s a feasibility study. It’s a vetting of a potential campaign that it would be unwise for the organization to go forward apart from the feedback of these key valued stakeholders and constituents. And so that information goes out to everyone on the interview list. We have some cases where for, for sensitive information in the program of work. Uh the client that we would work with might not send out the full plan until someone actually schedules an interview. We have online cloud based scheduling system that we use. So all of that is automated and simple. So not a lot of extra work there. But we want uh we want the interviewees to have perspective well, before we walk in the room because it’s gonna help us get the strongest feedback.

[00:33:45.25] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take to thank you, Classy. Their blog post is 17 podcasts for nonprofits you need on your radar, non profit radio. That’s this show is there number five, it would be my pleasure to name the others, but there are 16 of them. You wouldn’t remember them all. And that wouldn’t be fair to the ones that you don’t retain. Imagine that I’m not gonna let that happen to my fellow podcasters. Well, I’m not going to allow it. So there’s really only one show you need to know this one. Tony-martignetti non profit radio. The post with the full list is on the blog at classy dot org. Classy. Thank you very, very much. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got Boo koo, but loads more time for feasibility studies. What why and how with Brian Abernathy, they’re, they’re being asked to meet with someone outside the organization, right? That you, they’re, they’re being asked to meet with someone from convergent.

[00:34:08.09] spk_2:
That’s correct. And we identify that person even in that letter, uh you will be getting a call from so and so at the nonprofit organization to schedule a time for you to meet with Brian from Convergent for 45 minutes to an hour at a time of your convenience. So pretty, pretty clear all the way through. So they don’t think uh the executive director of the nonprofit is coming to meet with them and then it’s this outside consultant and they’re caught off guard or what have you,

[00:34:23.64] spk_0:
you prefer to do these in person or is zoom a suitable substitute?

[00:34:29.58] spk_2:
Zoom. Zoom has become a suitable substitute for a lot of things. I

[00:34:33.59] spk_0:
don’t know a necessity, right?

[00:35:20.41] spk_2:
But we still do the vast majority of our interviews in person and most of that is the opportunity to cultivate relationship when we meet with someone in their home or in their office or wherever it may be, you know, just the, the fundraising experience of walking in and seeing things in their office to be able to draw some personal connections. If that’s someone uh that we’re interviewing is 34 months later being sat down with by the same consultant to solicit a pledge. We walk in with that much more relational credibility and equity that we can leverage on behalf of our clients. So we love to do in person. That’s always our recommendation. But we, we absolutely are still doing some zoom interviews and in some cases, that’s just the most functional. We’ve, we’ve worked with some higher ed clients that have donors all over the country. And so in person is just not realistic and zoom allows us to do that. Uh And what we sacrifice in terms of not getting that uh in person sit down sort of warm fuzzy feel is certainly not detrimental to the results that we get in the final.

[00:36:28.17] spk_0:
But you prefer the in person. I always, I always prefer in person meetings with, you know, for me, I’m talking to planned giving prospects are playing, giving donors doing stewardship. But you know, there’s just nothing like seeing pictures of grandchildren, a picture of a sailboat awards from their business, whatever brother photographs there might be. I mean, there’s just a wealth of questions and you know, you can ask folks about to try to build a foundation with people and some of it, you know, may end up, you know, see pictures of yachts in the Caribbean or a yacht in the Caribbean. You know, that, that may be indicative of some, some potential potential giving that you maybe didn’t know about. Uh there’s just so much in someone’s home or office, but even just drawing, just like I said, just drawing a foundation for a relationship asking about the pictures, those Children, grandchildren, you know, etcetera. So yeah,

[00:37:13.30] spk_2:
and these days, the in person meetings are the ones that stand out in our memories, right? Where you’re like me all the time. But the so and so came by sat in my office or my living room, we spent time together. Those are now very much inflection points in terms of our interpersonal reactions are interpersonal interactions. And so that helps uh sort of entrance that conversation in the mind of the interviewee as well, which is a benefit when we get to a campaign because we want to come back and build on that prior conversation. Yeah,

[00:37:30.27] spk_0:
just have a warmer foundation to the relationship if it’s, if it’s not virtual, if it’s in person. What about meals? You like? Uh I like to, I like to, but I may have a different purpose. I’m not doing feasibility studies, but I happen to like to meet prospects and donors over meals is that, is that maybe not so suitable for a feasibility study?

[00:37:52.05] spk_2:
Yeah. We specifically tried to avoid meals and places for these conversations and some of it is we want to hear really candid feedback and we want to hear it about the organization we’re working with. We want to hear it about, as I mentioned a few moments ago. Who do you think could be that

[00:38:03.33] spk_0:
other people? Right. Right. The other person might be sitting two tables away. Yeah. Right.

[00:38:35.84] spk_2:
That’s right. That’s right. So it makes it a little bit easier to get the type of feedback we want. When we’re in a quiet private setting, we had clients who have said, hey, we’ve got a conference room right here in the office. We can do all the interviews in the office. And certainly that’s, that’s not the worst scenario. What we don’t want is somebody weird. Well, gosh, the executive director’s office is on the other side of this wall. I don’t want them to hear some of my true thoughts. So I just won’t share those things. So we, we try to always go to the interviewee so that we’re sitting down in, in their turf. So to say

[00:39:02.67] spk_0:
okay. And then, uh you have a conversation, right? You’re, you’re building that foundational relationship because hopefully you’ll, you’ll be embarking on a campaign with this non profit. Any bad story, like any war story, you ever get thrown out of someone’s home or office. Um I hope not. But if you did, I want to know if you did, I want to hear about it if you got thrown out.

[00:41:02.02] spk_2:
So you always get folks that have some sort of other unique local agenda or organization that they’ve got a stronger affinity for. And you hear a, well, this is, this is good but this other organization is, it’s really getting great work done. So, those are pretty commonplace. Um I had one that is sort of my favorite feasibility study. Worst story that, that really undergirds the importance of that fundraising skill that I talked about earlier. I walked into a feasibility interview. Uh The gentleman that I was gonna interview was ready. He was right there as I walked in, he had the draft program of work in front of him. So I’m thinking great. He read it, he’s ready to go and he pulls out another piece of paper and he says, I’m really glad that you’re here because uh five years ago, I supported this organization in a prior campaign. And this is the invoice for my last payment, which I’ll be sending off later this week. And then he held up that program of work. And he said this is the only other information I’ve received in five years is this proposed program of work. So I’ll be sitting this one out, but I appreciate your coming by to hear my thoughts and I didn’t get my questionnaire out. I thank you, I’ll be sure to convey your thoughts appropriately. Uh And, and that was the end of the interview. It was pretty quick, but that just goes to undergird tony, that all that we’re doing in nonprofits is setting the stage for the next opportunity. So you may not have a capital campaign in the next two years. But the things that an organization is doing today are laying the foundational building blocks so that they can be successful whenever that capital campaign or major funding initiative for an annual campaign you’re in, you can swap out the, the avenue. But that, that communication and relationship cultivation is absolutely critical. And

[00:41:30.92] spk_0:
the stewardship that follows. That’s right. He sounds like he made a five year, a five year pledge. He was just about to send his fifth pledge payment, happy to do it. But the stewardship was awful and all he got was the next funding plan. But he, he set

[00:41:49.98] spk_2:
you up very valid reasons for that organization and its leadership. But, but that, that individual didn’t care if there was a valid reason. His perception was the reality that he was working from. Um, and, and learning those things is good. Sometimes it’s painful to learn those things. But again, I would say that’s a value of a feasibility study as you get some of that inside perspective you otherwise might not

[00:42:30.47] spk_0:
have. Oh, absolutely. You know, you can’t count on that guy. He’s not he’s not gonna be your volunteer. He’s not gonna be your honorary chair. That’s right. It’s not gonna be any kind of volunteer and he’s not gonna give. So that is valuable to know because they probably thought exactly the opposite because he made a five year pledge to the previous campaign. So they probably thought he was a very, very good prospect for this campaign, but they did not do a good job at stewardship. So he’s sitting it out. I do note though that he set you up. He wanted to tell you this face to face. He didn’t want to do it by email. He didn’t say have Mr Abernathy call me an anti before he arranges the, before we meet Mr Abernathy called me. Didn’t, didn’t offer that. He, he wanted to tell it to your face to face.

[00:43:04.01] spk_2:
That’s right. He was going to schedule the meeting right after and you know, I can’t even, it’s probably not fair to presume intent or motive, but there’s a little bit of uh giving you the level of interaction that I didn’t get. Right. Nobody came by to talk to me, but you’re here now. And so I’m gonna tell you face in my perspective, it conveyed the seriousness of his thoughts. It’s really easy to ignore an email. It’s really easy to just say no, thanks. Don’t have time to meet with you. But it appropriately conveyed how, how significant it was to him that he had not been communicated with

[00:43:25.22] spk_0:
stewardship, stewardship. There’s no chance of trying to resurrect that relationship. And then maybe in the midst of the campaign, I mean, the, the CEO would have to be very humble and humble and apologetic, but maybe it’s worth exploring.

[00:44:55.96] spk_2:
Yeah, that’s one of those spots where you look at. Okay. Presuming you have the information available who connected with this individual last time. What was the process by which they were cultivated and solicited? What’s their prior other engagement with the organization? And sometimes tony, I’ve had feasibility interviewees tell me we might give a very nominal amount to this and I would have no interest in a leadership role because I’ve got my business to run and I’ve got these other things going on, but then you go back to them with the right person and they’re your campaign chair, right? I’ve literally seen that in that specific instance, play out in a campaign. And so it goes to show that just because someone says yes or no in one of these conversations does not mean that’s their final answer. And, and again, some of that is in the feasibility study, the value of an outside consultant is nobody’s afraid to tell them the truth. They don’t know them, they don’t have any local affiliate e affiliation. And so they’re just talking objectively about a program of work and collecting information when you get into a campaign, what you want is the exact opposite. You want relationship, you want influence and you pair the strategy and the perspective of a consultant with someone with local relationship and influence and you go back, you can change the response that you get very readily in many cases.

[00:45:16.28] spk_0:
So I’m not so naive. I mean, it’s, it’s possible to resurrect even the guy who says,

[00:45:24.89] spk_2:
but he

[00:46:56.46] spk_0:
held firm. But I would try if I was the CEO I would try and then if he’s not gonna meet me or, you know, he’s dismissive of the, you know, then of course, you can’t go any further. I’m not suggesting go any further, but it’s worth a try. I think, you know, I’m of the mind that if he didn’t care, I know we’re pulling on this one thread, but you picked a very valuable, that’s a really valuable outlier in your experience. He did care enough to tell you why he didn’t. He didn’t just do the things that you suggested would have been much easier, ignored the phone call, ignore the email just, you know, and then, and just blow the whole thing off. He did take the time to tell the organization that they messed up the relationship with him in so many, in so many words. So my belief is if people are willing to tell you that you’ve messed up, they, they still love you just not as much as they did when they made the five year pledge from the previous campaign. They don’t love you as much, but they do still have an affinity. They want you to know that you screwed it up. So, I, I see some, I see some potential but, and you’re saying I’m not 100% naive and at least trying to explore it. I’m optimistic. I have a glass is half full. What else can you tell us about the mechanics of, you’ve got these 55 to 65 interviews? You said you don’t do them over like three weeks. Obviously, you need some time to prepare your report. Do all you have multiple, I guess you have multiple interviewers, then how do you, how do you sort of coalesced the opinions of multiple interviewers?

[00:49:13.19] spk_2:
Yeah. So we’ve got some data collection and analysis tools that we use internally, uh that we come out from a couple of angles. So typically we would have one dedicated consultant who is running through the entire feasibility study process. And in a lot of cases, another of our senior team members is going to come on site for 23 days to, to join some interviews. What we want is a couple of different set of eyes on things. Um And then we come back out of those are our team member who’s been face to face with. Folks is telling us sort of the, the nuance of I heard these trends in conversation and these things don’t bear out in the numbers which are readily evolving day by day as we complete interviews. So we’re watching those trends as things move forward. But we’re able to say this, this number ticks here, but there’s, there’s a fact over here that’s meaningful, that’s not going to show up in the numbers. And so are are on the ground. Consultant is looking at that then a member of our client services leadership team is just blinders on looking at the data, right? Did we see a high enough level of interest in filling a leadership role? If we didn’t, we know there’s a hurdle, we’re gonna have to address do the completely objective numbers of a number of potential high level investors. We say investors, not donors. Now does the number of potential high level prospects match with what we would want to see to know that we could go out there and you know the 300 Hall of Fame batting average and still have a suitable pool of lead investments. Uh Do the numbers of financial indications match up to what history has shown us, we need to see to validate the campaign goal. And then we come together as a team internally and compare all of those things and triangulate in on the positive factors, the challenging factors, we identify what we call X factors that are outside variables that no one could control. But we heard enough about this that if X Y and Z bro this direction, it could have an adverse impact on the campaign. And again, we can’t do anything about it, but we need to always be aware of it so that we’re not surprised if something happens to shift, whether that’s local economy. I mean, who knows what those things could be? But they pretty often will reveal themselves through our interviews

[00:49:38.54] spk_0:
and then it’s a delivery to the, to the board. I don’t know, do the board leaders get an advanced copy of the report and then it’s a delivery to the full board or everybody gets it released to them at the same time, how does, what’s the best way there?

[00:51:14.32] spk_2:
So generally, within about a week of completing our interviews, we’re going to jump on a call with the executive and maybe executive team for our client by depending on their preference and share our preliminary find. So this is yes, we believe a campaign is feasible or not. Here’s the goal amount that we believe is uh is feasible low to high range and here or any other unique variables that we want to get planted in your mind so that you can think through how would be best to present those to your board and other key leaders. That meeting is typically about three weeks or so after we complete the interviews, because it does take us a couple of 2, 2.5 weeks to get that report together and polished up and presentable. And then we would send it to our client executive and give them discretion as to how they would want to distribute it in some cases. They just want to share an executive summary. And so we’ve got that ready in others. They want us to present and then they want to share the report. So we’re pretty flexible on that. And that’s really because every organization is different. And so we don’t, that’s one of those spots that we don’t try to prescribe. You’ve got to send the whole report to the whole board before some boards would read it and then check out of the conversation in person. And you know, there’s all kinds of variables out there that we don’t try to over prescribe a method for, for how we would present. But we would step in and show them the details of the findings. Give them some of the candid feedback at a again aggregate level and share whatever our recommendations would be for next steps.

[00:51:34.26] spk_0:
That’s, that’s a feasibility study. And then they’ve got their 9200 and 20 days to make a decision.

[00:51:52.56] spk_2:
Yeah. And most of the time it’s uh it’s, there’s a campaign or follow on work, I should say most of the time, it’s a much quicker transition. We had a client recently that um it’s sort of still in this process. So, but they had a very specific piece of X factor outside variable that needed to have a clear decision before they would be well positioned to move into a campaign that happened to involve some public sector decisions that has played out over the course of about nine months. And it looks like now they’re gonna be ready to move towards that campaign.

[00:52:14.87] spk_0:
Okay. But now they’re now they’re nine months past the feasibility study. So there might need to be some follow up interviews.

[00:52:17.27] spk_2:
That’s right. We’ll schedule over the first month or so of the campaign. A handful of those re interviews, just rechecking bearings knowing that there’s no new surprises that may have crept up or identifying any new surprises and course correcting for how we would want to navigate those moving

[00:52:53.73] spk_0:
forward. You had mentioned foundations as interviewees, foundation staff are willing to, to take these kinds of meetings and make a broad, I mean, they can’t commit, they can’t commit because every decision is a decision of the board. But foundation staff or I guess it’s a program staff are willing to take this

[00:53:47.41] spk_2:
in varying cases. And so you hit a very specific point that we always monitor when there are foundations on our interview list is 99% of the time that foundation staff person is gonna say a grant is a decision of the board. Our grant guidelines are on the internet or invitation only or whatever the variables. But we typically can be pretty strategic in using an interview if we get it as a cultivation approach. So less of a tell us what the foundation would do and more of a, how would we best position this for success? Given your focus areas as a foundation and would your foundation rather lead the way and help us get out of the starting block strong or put us over the goal line at the other end of the campaign? And as you probably know very well, there are foundations that have very specific spots that they want to play in that process. And we need to know that in a campaign so that we’re not starting out thanking on a meaningful grant from a foundation when that foundation’s board would rather be making that grant. You know, when we’re 80 90% of the way to the goal already.

[00:54:31.92] spk_0:
And, and it could be a funder that’s funded the nonprofit in the past, they’re still not gonna commit to something they’re still going to defer to their board. But uh they, you can deepen the relationship in, in that case. Okay. All right, Brian, why don’t you just leave us with a little uh a little motivation about feasibility studies.

[00:56:15.09] spk_2:
The important thing with a feasibility study is I would say is getting it right. It’s not one of those things that you want to rush through, I would say to a non profit, it’s not something you really want to do on your own because you’re gonna miss some of that objective third party perspective. And that is such a valuable due diligence, a campaign, a capital campaign of a large scale and we’re typically testing multimillion dollar projects. It’s not one of those things that you want to risk swinging and missing. Uh knowing exactly what is out there in terms of the fund, ability of a plan, the amount of funding that’s there. You can save a lot of relational equity and as we talked about before credibility for an organization. So like I said, we will do feasibility studies where there is no interest in our doing a campaign uh and, and offer that perspective in that guidance. But it also we’re an organization recognizes, they don’t have the capacity for a campaign in terms of their internal staff is a just invaluable first step of counting the cost before you don’t go out and start to build that tower. So we’re no surprise big proponents of feasibility studies. We’ve talked a lot internally. Is there uh is there a way to get the same information out of a different process? This is one of those things we’ve tried every thought of innovation and how, how could we move faster? But the reality is from our experience, there is just not a better way to get the level of intelligence that a feasibility study provides and then be able to go into a capital campaign from a position of

[00:56:51.64] spk_0:
success. And plus there’s that relational foundation. Yeah, that, that, that’s so much that’s so much value to it as Well, building that building that relationship. All right. Thank you, Brian. Brian Abernathy, General Manager at Convergent non profit Solutions. The company is at Convergent non profit dot com and you’ll find Brian on linkedin. Brian. Thank you very much. Thanks so much, tony. My pleasure. Thanks for sharing next week, data driven storytelling with Julia Campbell. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com.

[00:57:17.04] spk_1:
We’re sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster, helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Our creative producer

[00:57:37.14] spk_0:
is Claire Meyerhoff shows. Social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with me next week for nonprofit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Connect With Your Planned Gift Donors

In talking to donors and potential donors to your Planned Giving fundraising program, it helps to be aware of the history and culture those folks grew up with in the mid to late 1900s. At least be curious about that period. Start with Abbott & Costello. 

 

Abbott & Costello’s “Who’s On First” 

Nonprofit Radio for August 18, 2017: 5-Minute Marketing for Planned Giving & What’s Fair Game?

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Me: 5-Minute Marketing for Planned Giving

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Maria Semple: What’s Fair Game?

Maria Semple

Info you find on LinkedIn about a potential donor belongs in your report on the person. What about Facebook and Instagram? What if the tidbit is embarrassing or compromising, but valuable to your org? Should you friend prospects to learn more? Maria Semple walks us through the ethical conundrums. She’s our prospect research contributor and The Prospect Finder. (Sounds much more interesting than the first segment.)

 

 

 


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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 become fei broke calcification if you hardened to me with the idea that you missed today’s show five minute marketing for planned e-giving the best person to reveal my wildly simple plan giving promotion tips is me oh boy, i don’t know what i’ve gotten into, but i’m here and what’s fair game info you find on linked in about a potential donor belongs in your report on the person. What about facebook and instagram? What if the tidbit is embarrassing or compromising but valuable to your organization? Should you friend prospects tto learn more about them? Maria semple walks us through the ethical conundrums she’s, our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder this sounds much more interesting than the first segment and ah, much easier sarrantonio take two planned giving timing we’re sponsored 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 all right, well there is not a guest to welcome because, uh, i’m it, um, it’s a little awkward, because although i do a ton of speaking training this, you know that i don’t know, i think it’s very different that’s on a stage, people expect to hear me because i’m in the program it’s not like i just walked in, but i have crashed a few conferences, but they never up on stage. It hasn’t been successful yet, but those aside, you know, i’m in the program i mean, i mean, alright, i’m in today’s program it’s been booked, i’m booked for the spot, but the show is never been me sharing, you know, for, like, for a full segment. What? What i purport to know about planned e-giving or charity registration. You know, i filled in from time to time. Ah, guest is lead or a segment ran short maybe a pre recorded thing man short. And so i would fill in for, like, five minutes or seven minutes or so think is probably the most, but this is, uh this is a different one. This is different experience. Andi, i’m ah, i’m a little nervous about it. My voice just cracked like i’m a fourteen year old. Um all right, well, i mean, i certainly capable, but it feels weird that’s what i’m saying, it just feels different. This is not my typical venue for me to be speaking without having somebody to talk to. Let me just do a little technical detail first, sam is the facebook shared on facebook live shared on the non-profit radio page, can we, uh because i don’t want it just on my personal pager doing facebook live today? I don’t know if maria simple is going to do facebook live on her end, but you’ll you’ll certainly be hearing her when when it’s her turn. But look at me. I’m already rushing to the second segment already know this is this is okay. Not yet. Not yet. Maria, hang on. Okay, so you want to share the facebook live to the non-profit radio page so that it’s called tony martignetti non-profit radio. Okay, i have to do it on mine. Okay, so ah, i apologized, teo, podcast listeners for ah, for this. You know, just give me a little technological moment, okay? I’m in my facebook. Ah, i see. Live what? Ah, sam’s. Gonna say, i’m gonna take my phone and take care of that and of course, you know, we’re gonna get to the five minute marketing tips. Just hold your horses. You’ve got a nerve, you know, nervous guest. Okay, sam is going to take care of that. So five minute marketing i haven’t expanded version of this that i have done at conferences runs on for ninety minutes or so you’re not getting that version. Don’t we’re going to keep to the toe? Keep to the hour. Okay, but, you know, i mean, if you want me, tio training your conference. I love teo. I love to speak just this is today’s a little weird. So so here’s what? I ah anticipate we’re going to cover very briefly. What plans giving is we’ll make sure everyone’s on the same page with that. What kinds of non-profits benefit? Like what? What do you need to have in place before you can start your plan giving five minute marketing. Okay, on dh. What? The radical revocable planned gift are that that we’re going to be talking about marketing for and there’s a lot more plan giving beyond revocable but that’s what’s going to talk, you know, which is like scratching the surface, you know? Well, it’s, not bite off too much. I want you to get going with plant. E-giving and it doesn’t have to be in depth. So we’re starting with the revocable, and then we’ll get into the marketing tips, which is the bulk of book of our time. Okay, i’m feeling a lot more comfortable but it’s still also a little weird now, it’s like fifty, fifty instead of like ninety ten on the weighted to the weird side now, it’s like fifty fifty okay. Plan giving this’s a method of giving that is long term, involves the donors consideration of their long term plans. Their state plans a retirement plans very different than asking a donor, too, right? A fifty dollar check or even a half a million dollar check or a five million dollar check. These thes gif ts involved more personal considerations of family on dh. How your charity fits into their much longer term plan. And then, typically, these are cash to your organization when the donor dies. So again, long term, if you get a sixty or sixty five year old to include you in their will, they’ve got a twenty five, thirty, thirty five year longevity. So long term. You need to have this long term view of fund-raising. Your board needs to have that. We’re going to get to that board support. But this is not the type of giving that is going to pay the five year capital plan. Or or, you know, any kind of immediate immediate budget needs that you have. This is long term fund-raising. I want to stress that the outset that this is not on ly for your wealthy donors, i mean, the five minute mark in tips i’m going to be giving you these these quick ideas, these air, we’re going to be doing these for all your donors. We’re not getting into discriminating by age, um, because these are easy tips. So i want you to know that these are ideas that are appropriate for any donor-centric to get to this is not on ly for your wealthy donors and all of plant that applies to all of planned e-giving people are very modest means can be terrific planned give prospects i literally mean, if they have been giving you fifteen dollars, a year and they have been doing it for many years, like twelve of the past fifteen years, or eighteen or nineteen or twenty years of the past twenty, they are great plan giving prospects. This is not playing e-giving is not only for your wealthy donors, please take that away and that does not applied on ly to what we’re talking to about today. All of planned e-giving people have very modest means, very modest can include you. In their state plan, the smallest plan to gift i’ve ever seen was a thousand dollars in someone’s will and that’s very rare that i’ve seen that only a handful of times in twenty years. Thank you seventeen twenty years i’ve been doing plan giving only seen a couple seen that a couple of times the average charitable bequests in which you’re gonna be talking about a lot about will’s requesting a will, the average is around thirty six to thirty seven thousand dollars is the average bequest, so please take away planned giving is not on ly for your wealthy donors. Um, we’re going to ah, i just got, you know, we’re going to take our break now, and when we come back, then we’re going to get into what you need to have in place, what kind of non-profits benefit what these revocable gifts are that we were talking about and the marketing tips 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. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent since people joining us because that voice again joining us on facebook live. I gotta gotta shout them out. J frost hello. Thank you. Interesting subject. You’ve had me. Uh, jay, didn’t we set something up there? I speak about this. Or maybe i did charity registration for you, but j, are you running for congress? I heard that. I don’t know if it’s true. Let me know if you are running. I admire that very much. If you are. If you’re not, i, uh i still admire you, but you’re a little more lackluster than if you are running. Jackie likened jackie, laken maria and and that’s it okay, so far so far. Ok, cool. Thanks for being with me on facebook. All right, let’s, get into which organizations benefit right now. By the way, i feel much more comfortable now. Now. It’s like ninety five five in my comfort in this format, speaking alone. All right, so what do you need to have in place? You need to have individual donors? If you are strictly grant funded government funded fee for service funded, then you don’t have any potential for plan giving. You need to have individual people e-giving from their pockets and that’s distinguished from people who get you corporate gifts from their employers. That’s different you need to have people giving from their pockets, maybe it’s just your board. I hope all your board is giving from their individual pockets. They certainly should be. Lots of guests have made that case over the years, but, you know, it’s limited to the extent that you have individual donors, if you have lots of people who give individual gifts and great that that is a prerequisite also some longevity i’d like to see at least five years in an organization, because what are we asking the donors to do put you in their will or their other long term plans? Retirement said retirement or state plans inherent in that is the belief that your organization is going toe outlive them. And even though there’s, great passion and even fury sometimes around, you know, new organizations, they’re going to live forever. Your donors don’t may not have the same confidence probably don’t that you do when you’re a brand new organization, so i’d like to see at least five years that gives some confidence that your organization will survive the people who make these plan gifts for you some depth to i’d like to see more than just ah, founder and one or two people, same reason longevity, you know, you might have small potential again. Maybe just you’re bored if you’re just a founder and one or two people. But ah, outsiders is going to be much harder to persuade outsiders that you will survive them if ifit’s a tiny organization just a few people. The long term view of fund-raising i explained why before this could be thirty years waiting for cash to come to your organization. So you need to have a long term view of fund-raising um, and you’re bored metoo needs to understand that building endowment, i hope every knows what endowment is just in case endowment is that fund that you never spend the principle of you only spend, eh? Well, you may not. You only spend income and you may not even spend all the income you have a very good year in your returns, you know, in eight or ten or twelve percent year because non-profits are typically conservatively invested, you’re probably not spending that eight or ten percent, you’re spending a lot less like half of that because they’re going to be years when we turned your lower but that’s the purpose of an endowment isto live perpetually live forever. Hopefully, you’re never spending more than income and plant giving is perfect for building endowment because so many plan gifts are unrestricted and they could get put into that endowment fund, and even a lot of the restricted ones can go to endowment of creating endowed funds for aa program of yours. Ah, scholarships or popular if it’s ah, you know, if it’s some kind of school college, anything you know, really a donor could endow just about anything programmatically, as long as you are willing your organization’s willing to continue that program. So plan giving very good for building endowment. That board support. I mentioned any new initiative. If you’re gonna start planned giving, you need to have the board on board and aware of the long term nature of these kinds of gifts six months into this, you don’t want to boardmember complaining, we haven’t recognized any cash. You’re spending time, even if you say it’s only five minute marketing and but where’s the cash you don’t want that so set the expectations correctly at the outset, but your board members know again long term could be twenty, thirty years for some donors until the cash is received by your organization and any type of mission. I really don’t care what you do if you’re saving animals the sky, trees, educating, feeding, sheltering what else can we be doing? You know any of the charitable missions, anything religious, anything, social service, cultural museums. I worked in the north buried, um, you name it. Anything charitable, it doesn’t matter. Everything i’m going to sixth explain applies for you fund-raising across all charitable missions guaranteed um snusz cj frost in answer didn’t answer whether is going for congress. All right, maybe he’s not. Oh, not yet. He says. Not yet. Okay, well, getting there? Yeah. It’s easy for me to say. Why did you do it? Tony? Martignetti plant giving. So when we are ah, yes, this is this has come up for me a lot. Sexism. I want you to avoid not giving women the attention that they deserve in planned e-giving this goes back to january two thousand eleven, you can go to tony martignetti dot com could see the block post. Just just search sexism. A tony martignetti dot com. You’ll see the post i did and one of the comments. So what i’m what i’m quoting now from is from a comment not me surprise, not quoting myself. There were women who said that they had dropped hints, left messages, sent emails or boldly said something about a state planning and planned e-giving two non-profits that they had been supporting and this was more than one woman, it was one comment or talking about friends of hers, and they have been ignore it. I don’t know how that could possibly happen that is gross negligence and oversight just don’t don’t ignore women. I mean, they have money and they live longer than men, so a lot of men are giving the money to the women. But even if they didn’t, even if they had a shorter life span, they’re still half the population, women have wealth, and they want to support non-profits, so i don’t know how these hints, messages and bold statements could possibly be ignored. Don’t let that happen in your office, it’s gross. All right, we’re moving now to the what what types of gifts i’m talking about. The revocable plan gifts the three. I want to focus on our charitable bequests, that’s, a gift in your will. I got more detail on that living trusts to type of trust that people set up is not charitable purpose. It’s not set up for charitable purposes, but you could be a part of it and being named a beneficiary. Okay, those are the three revocable gifts that were focusing on today. There’s, a ton more you, khun do cracking again, oppcoll sip. Pardon me. Ton more you can do with planned giving, but oppcoll um, i’m only focusing on three things today that these three revocable gifts cherokee, facebook live says yes, we do. Tony yes, women have money and they want to give it don’t ignore them. All right, so these are the three revocable gifts that i’m focusing on because, you know, it’s only a half an hour now and now i feel like i don’t give myself enough time she’d done the whole show. Maria simple, you’re out, you’re out. I’m going out for sixty, all right? No, no, uh, let’s. See? And i want you to know that you can have a very, very respectable planned e-giving program just by focusing on these three revocable gifts, your organization may not be big enough to go any further, and that is fine. And you can have a really respectable, successful plan giving program if you just focus on these three types of gift. Well, you’re already feeling like i’m going to run out of time. All right, all right. So please take that away along with its not only for your wealthy donors. Please take away that you could be a very successful planned giving shop just focusing on these three revocable gif ts absolutely you’re bigger. You want to go further? Absolutely, andi, i worked a lot of organizations that do but also work with a lot that don’t all right. This charitable bequests again, it’s a gift in somebody’s will it’s the most popular kind of planned gift by far, you can expect like seventy five to eighty percent of the gifts that you get to be gifts by will. Why is that? Lots of reasons people don’t have to tell you that they’ve done it? It’s private, we always asking we always want people to tell you because you want to be able to say thank you, but they don’t have to, they can change their minds. This national statistic is like four percent of people change their minds after they put a charity in a will so it’s highly highly unlikely, but you don’t want to be in that four percent. You’ve got to treat your donor’s well and it’s comforting to donors to know that they can change their minds because that’s why a lot of donors don’t tell you because they feel if they do. Tell you, they then have an obligation not to change their minds. We all know that that’s not true. You can change your will anytime you want. I cut my wife out routinely every couple days. There’s. Nothing left for her, but u s so it’s comforting to your donors to know that they can cut you out, even though it’s highly unlikely. But it’s a reason that’s another reason that gift by will are so popular because it’s comforting to donors to know that no lifetime cost this is money that comes out of your state. Lots of people have charity they’re supporting, they wish they could doom or than they can while they’re living. I’m in that situation, but they can do for you cracker voice again. They can do for you mme, or they could do more for you in their state so that maybe their ultimate gift has to be for a lot of people again, remember modest, modest means donors of modest means. They wish they could do more, but they can’t, but that’s an advantage in that there’s no lifetime cost to these. Okay, that’s really? Pretty much all i want to say about requests. No, except for do they get a charitable deduction. Doesn’t matter because these are people who love your love. Your non-profit they’re already donating to you. These are the kinds of people who’re gonna include you in their will. So the charitable deduction, the estate tax deduction who knows what the state of it is going to be in the future? We have no idea, even within the next couple weeks and months, let alone twenty, thirty years from now. But that’s not the primary motivation for most planned gift it’s not that it’s, not the state tax deduction, so don’t worry about it. Okay? The other one, we won’t talk about his living trusts. As i said, it’s set up um, teo, not for charitable purposes. They set it up. People set it up for expedience to get get things out of their state faster. It works because there’s not a court supervised process like if if like it isn’t with a will called that you might have heard this probate process jargon jail, but the probate processes the court supervising the distribution of your assets after your death and by the way, i was death, you know that some people like to i don’t kind ofyou from eyes passing demise. The fact is, you know, we’re going to die and that’s ah that’s, just a part of planned e-giving and when i’m not saying, when you talk to a donut, you’re saying, when you die, we want you in our will we want to be in your will i’m not saying that, but between professionals, you know we can we can say death so that’s what probate is that court supervised process and the assets will get to ah teo ball beneficiaries quicker through a living trust and that’s typically white set up what’s your part in it. The trust has to say what happens at the donors at the death of the person who creates the trust. That’s, your donor has to say what happens. Ah lot goes to my husband, children, husband, wife, children, grandchildren, your charity khun b also one of those beneficiaries at the person’s death you could be named that’s. What? That’s what the value of the living trust is and the third one recovering is the name the beneficiary that’s? Just i’m gonna stop calling out my voice cracks that’s. The last one. I’m calling out the name beneficiary. Anything that has a death benefit. Think of life insurance, that’s, the most common example. You’ve got to decide where the death benefit is going to go, when, when, when you’re where’s, the money going to go most of it goes to husbands, wives, children, grandchildren. But maybe there’s a percentage for your charity. Five percent. Ten percent somebody can carve out. We always say family comes first. But after that, how about a small percentage for for our charity? But going beyond life insurance, some retirement plans, iras four oh, one case for three. B’s cept the small, small employer pensions. Some commercial annuities have death benefits. Some checking and savings accounts have ah, on brokerage accounts have have death benefit metoo them. So anything that has a death benefit your charity can be named all right now we’re getting into the actual five minute marketing tips that i have let’s start with events, drop a few speaking points into remarks were already hosting the event is not a plan giving event but any kind of gala. Any event where your c always speaking that’s probably everyone get them to say something about planned giving. You just need a couple of sentences. This’s. Not even well, i was gonna say not even a full paragraph, but two sentences. Khun b paragraph this is not even a full minute literally. I’m excited. We’ve kicked off a campaign to encourage you to remember us. You know, the organization in your will, it’s, very simple to do and secures our work long into the future. For instance, you know, then you can name a program or something that could be that could be endowed. I was talking about earlier, perpetually, or you could just, you know, rattle off program that you have. You know, you can support any of our great programs. You want more information? Talk to there’s a director development in the corner, you know, you know her. Talk to me. Talk to whoever it is. That’s it it’s like three, four sentences, quick it’s not the main part of the event by any means. Just we’ve kicked off a campaign. That’s a little news hook. It was something interesting kicked off this campaign. Love for you to be a part of it. It’s so simple you couldn’t tao any of our great programs support any of our great programs in the long term. Please talk. Teo. Whoever it is a t end of the program that’s it. I didn’t even spend a minute. Good thinking. I’m gonna run out of time. I should have we’re simple, you’re out. Um okay, five minute marketing was teo. So moron events pretty a program. You already printing a program for pizza? Put something about plan giving in the program. Put a little mention, you know, i’m the evangelist for plan e-giving without the religious overtones of evangelism, but you know, you’re doing the program. Same thing we’ve kicked off a campaign. I’m like dictating it to just start writing. We kicked off a campaign to encourage you to remember us in your will, it’s, so simple to do, secures our work long into the future. Your attorney is going to need our legal name, address and tax id. Here they are. Boom that’s it. Can you put that in your program? But you can or, you know, if you don’t even wanna go that much, just say we kicked off a program. Talk too. Whoever it is, whatever the contact person is. Please. I would love to talk to you today. Get something in the program again. Not spending any more money. You’re already producing programmes anyway. Kayman sample ward is on social media contributor and the ceo of and ten the non-profit technology network out in the prophet oregon. Yes. Wonderful. Welcome, amy. Well mmm. So many. I can’t name them. Uh, not that many more. A couple more. We gotta live. Listen, love too. That’s coming later with second segment. Okay, um okay. That’s it for events again. You not spending any more money already producing the program? Say something. You put something in your already speaking put in a couple of dropping a couple sentences. Oh, my gosh. Print channels. You doing newsletter? Or whether it’s print or email put in a sidebar with the same thing we’ve kicked off a campaign love to have you participate it’s so easy all you need is our two included to include us in your will. Well, you need your legal name, tax id and address. Here they are. Boom! Drop that into a sidebar on any whether it’s print or digital your annual report. Whether you do a printer digital say something about planned giving, innit? Also now i know some organizations i know are getting away from naming donors. I’ve learned that that’s in their annual report, it was always so cumbersome, you get the misspellings and i got so embarrassing the wrong levels. But if you’re naming them, if you’re naming donors in the annual report include your plan giving donors any direct mail you might be doing joppa buckslip in, you know, that’s, a book of your buckslip two third of a page, you print three and page drop it in the same thing that i’ve been talking about kicked off a campaign love to have you participate all your attorney needs is our legal name, tax id and address here they are boom drop that in it’s a third of a page doesn’t cost any more doesn’t increase your postage um, while you’re doing that while printing on direct mail printing envelopes on the envelope flap the flap that you’ve got a print, the envelopes anyway a checkoff box send me information on including your or the name, of course in my will we’ll check off everybody reads that everybody sees the envelope flap so easy i think i gotta wrap it up down i say, sam nods all right, so, uh well, time flies. Holy cow. It’s amazing. This show is out of control. What a show! Um, okay, that’s, five minute marketing for planned giving and what’s fair game with maria simple is coming up first pursuing acquisition campaigns. You need more donors, new donors, it’s their next free webinar on acquisition campaigns getting your new donors what works to inspire that first gift. They’ll have lots of examples actionable strategies which i love you know, i’m always drooling down with guests. I don’t know if people get annoyed but durney bluhm welcome on facebook. Cool. Thanks for joining me. Um, i know people get annoyed. I know listeners. Don’t have guests do but drilling down to actionable steps? I don’t like vagary, i don’t like ten thousand i mean sometimes ten thousand feet, yes, but then we got to drill down. You got to start it. You start high level but then we drill down to tactics. Who actionable steps that’s what i love and that’s what pursue is going to have in this in this webinar that’s? Why they’re that’s, why they sponsor non-profit radio for pizza and so s so now where do you go to register gnome or pursuing dot com click resource is took their bernard no that’s out. Don’t do that. Go to the custom, earl. They have a landing page for non-profit radio listeners. They stepped up their game so we’re stepping up. We gotta step up our game and i need listeners to go to this landing page. So, tony dot m a slash pursuant with a capital p please. In bentley, it matters. You gotta have the capital p in pursuing tony dahna slash pursuant that’s where all the pursuing registrations are going to be from now i’m for now provoc radio listeners i announce our three fifty that they pursuing has, uh, renew their sponsorship. So grateful for that, tony that m a slash pursuant capital p for the acquisition campaign’s web in arts on august thirty first, but if you can’t, oh, it doesn’t really matter, because if you can’t watch live, sign up there on that landing page and then you’ll get an email that tells you when the archive is up. But if that happens within forty eight hours of the live, so if you can’t make the r live watching archive, sign up and you’ll get an email tells you how to watch the archive. Tony dahna may slash pursuant, we’ll be spelling. Please watch the video. See what a fun night of millennial fund-raising looks like that can be yours. This could be your fun night it’s devoted to you it’s not so there was some confusion. Some people thought it was a bunch of charity’s one night. No, we’ll be spelling hosts this for you, for your charity, a night of live dance comedy, um, music, live music and spelling and fund-raising for your organization, this could be cool for any millennial supported organization. If you’re trying to acquire millennials on dh encourage them in get them activated or if they’re already supporting. I don’t know. Uh, i know any sample or do you still on? I don’t know. I don’t want anybody on the spot but intent should consider ah, we’ll be spelling. Um, okay, so check out the video. We b e spelling dot com and then talk to the ceo alex career. You know, he’s a nice guy. He was on the three, fiftieth. Just pick up the phone and talk to him. We be the spelling dot com. Now time for tony’s. Take two and, uh, plan e-giving what do you know? What a coincidence. See how this show is orchestrated? This doesn’t just happen. This is a thought goes into this. Or you could say i have such a limited before that the topics have to coincide because i got so i got so naturally that’s going to come up have to sound the same show. No that’s, not the case planned giving the timing does not matter. I want you to get started with plan giving using those five minute marketing tickets i gave you. And it doesn’t matter when you get started. It’s not, you know. This is informational it’s educational it’s not write us a check. Now you know it’s, our it’s, our annual campaign it’s not like that this’s informational stuff educational donors are going to do it on their timetable, but you’ve got to stop start marketing and promoting the idea. That’s okay, so it doesn’t matter when you start so today’s friday for the live listeners yourselves, the weekend maybe take monday to talk to your ceo tuesday should be starting five minute marketing tips in plan e-giving that’s what i would say so give yourself till tuesday on dh for people listening podcast and of course, our affiliate listeners. So that’s, give yourself three days and then on the fourth day on the fourth day, he said you should begin plan e-giving that’s when the light comes, i don’t think it was the fourth day, but i’m not. I’m not steeped in genesis, okay, the video if you need more promote if you need any more encouragement than that, you could watch my video promote planned giving your timing doesn’t matter. It’s at tony martignetti dot com that is tony’s take two. Maria simple has been patiently waiting. You know her? Aside from a patient waiter, she’s, the prospect finder she’s, a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her latest book is magnify your business tips, tools and strategies for growing your business or your non-profit she’s. Our doi end of dirt cheap and free ideas. She’s at the prospect finder dot com and at maria simple and she’s on the phone. Hello, maria. Hello, tony. How are you today? I’m doing great. My voice krauz i said i was gonna do that, linda, like kowski joined us. Hello, linda. Jackie liking says hello from noven health. Hello, jackie. I wish you were coming to the beach. She bagged out on me. Um okay. Maria? Yeah. It’s good to talk to you. Last time was very brief on the three, fiftieth that’s, right? That’s, right? And so now we’re plugging ahead to your for four hundred shell, right? That’s? Correct. It’ll be july twenty eighteen. Absolutely. In the meantime, way want to talk about ethics and what’s what’s fair game. What? You deal with this every single time you’re doing an assignment for a client, right? Yeah. Yeah. That’s. Right, tony, i mean, you know, when we’re talking about prospect research and we’re thinking about all the various tools that we have available to us as prospect researchers, you know, we have to think about what’s available in the public domain because that’s, the thing that’s going to be really important, keep in mind that a donor has the right to come in at any time and asked to see what information you may have compiled on them. So you want to make sure that that you’re always using sources that are available in the public domain. So where we kind of get into some gray areas are in the area of social media sites? Yes, okay, and i think that’s a very, very good test never put anything in your c r m database that you wouldn’t want a donor to read, i think that’s a good test. What do you think? Yeah, yeah, and and i think even even in the way that you’re writing up your reports, try and think about it as an investigative reporter trying not to put subjective statements in there, even if they may have been sort of subjective statements that you might have heard, you know, through the grapevine from volunteers or board. Members or whatever about somebody’s lifestyle or their marital status or whatever it may be, you know, try and just put a statement in there, you know, like whatever the couple divorced in x y z, day ten, you know, leave it out that i don’t think anybody would take offense to that very objective. A bunch of people just join us on facebook. So i got to tell you that we’re talking about the ethics of planned, of, of prospect research and what’s appropriate to be documenting and finding about potential donors. And i want to welcome michael zeller, attorney in north carolina. Just charlotte just hosted an outstanding fiftieth birthday party. Oh, my god. Michael, that was outstanding. You know, i know that. You know, i feel that rob maker. Good to see a rab. Welcome. And dahna gillespie dahna collectibe rivera, but i know it. I know. He’s dahna gillespie. Welcome. Um, okay, so but there can be great value in the end. What you find in social media, of course. I mean, people put a lot of stuff on social and their privacy settings are typically, i think, generally not set the way they want them. And but so there can be a lot of prospect research gold in in the networks, right? Yeah, that’s, right? So, you know, what i thought we might do is just sort of talk about sort of the top three networks for a couple of minutes, like the linked in facebook and twitter and may be trying to figure out, well, what types of information can we glean on dh? Should we be cleaning it? Should we be using it? You know, even if we were stumble upon it, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you put it into this. C r m r we’re into a written report. Yeah, okay, it’s, anarchist, but that’s way could do it that way. I’m just you know, i was thinking of some of the things that you could find out. I mean, you can find out about divorce, right? You know, i’ve had friends, i’ve had two friends who were posting about suicidal, suicidal thoughts, you know? I don’t know probably a lot of people see that, but i mean, that’s very disturbing, but does it belong in a prospect research report? Maybe i don’t know, maybe if you’re looking for that plant. Gift let’s not go there. I’m just kidding. Ae okay, i’m gonna let you off the hook. But it’s, good let’s go over that. We’ll skip over that. Okay? You know and and the words very sensitive stuff. Okay, so you want to you want to start with it? Works. All right. Let’s start with now to me, linked in to me, anything on linkedin is fair game in a prospect research report is that is that is that am i overstating and my oversimplifying? Yeah, i think that anything you find on lengthen, especially since lincoln has what they call a public profile that is out there it is searchable on google. It will come up on page one of google’s search results. If you if you google your prospects name, they’re linked in profile is going to be there. So yes, indeed, anything that you find there is going to be a public domain, and this is sometimes very valuable information. You’ll be able to find out, you know, their longevity at various companies. Maybe some of the companies that they’ve been associated with may have been for for a long period of time. Maybe they’ve got some. Stock that they’ve accumulated from within that company so you might want to think about steering the conversation in the direction of appreciated securities. Okay, okay, but we wear what we want to focus to on the ethics. So so basically, linkedin is do you consider linked in to be wide open? Yes. Okay, absolutely. Okay, i don’t see any ethical questions around anything that people might find in linked in. No, not not what they might find, but the ethical question might come in as to how you as the prospect researcher or the executive director of the development staff using length in how you might have your own privacy setting set up in such a way that, um, you know what other people can see once you’ve looked at their profile, right? So you have three choices on lengthen. You either have people know that you’re looking at there, profile your face, your title and where you work, right are going to follow you everywhere on linked in that headline and a picture so that’s full transparency when you have your privacy settings set up that way, that means they get to see you’ve been looking at them. And you get to see who’s been looking at your profile, but lincoln has two other privacy settings. One is sort of a semi private where, you know, you could be a management consultant in x y z industry in new york city area. Or you could be anonymous when you’re in one of those two modes, then people will not know that you’ve been looking at their profile. Okay? And we have covered this before. You know, this is what i consider fully dressed topless and naked. That’s. Right? Okay. All right. Uh, look, i got a chuckle out of maria. Simple she’s. Probably the only one that’s. Okay? I amuse myself. People should know. You know, if you don’t think i’m funny, i’m amusing myself that’s the most important. And i forgot to shut out joan pel xero i’m sorry, joan. I skipped over you. I scrolled up and then i lost you. Joan pills her on facebook. Thanks for so much for being with us. And also ralph asante and, uh, and mary and mary michalowski joined. Hello, mary. Thanks for joining us on facebook. I might do this more often. This is cool. Um all right. So ethically linked in safe now, let’s, go, teo. Ethical conundrum, where you want to go next, all the anarchist, i’ll give it to you where it’s, like, you want to know what network that let’s talk about facebook, okay, so wide open, okay, yeah, i mean, that’s, the network where people are really sharing about their family, their pictures wait, no, this so what? What do we do with what do we do if we find something that we believe is compromising, like let’s, say, a divorce that that maybe they don’t want the organization to know, but maybe that’s? Just what that’s, just one example, but compromising, but valuable to the organization. How do we deal with that? Again, i think go backto original statement if it’s going to if it’s going to jeopardize your relationship with that donor or that donor prospect, i think you leave it out of the conversations, you leave it out of the c r, m u leave it off of written reports, so if you could just sort of have that is your bellweather, i think it will serve you well, okay, okay, and also you’re your organization might have social media guidelines in place, so check that out first as as your you know, you may have certain guidelines that you, as an organization have decided upon. So if that is the case, anybody knew that you’re bringing into the organization should be aware of the social media guidelines both in terms of how they’re going to use social media for are on behalf of the organization, but there may also be, you know, standards of conduct that they’re expecting a view is an employee’s so again, default back to that statement and default back to your own bellwether your instincts if it feels like it’s going to jeopardize that relationship, don’t put the info in there also apra the the professional association for prospect researchers has a statement on ethics, and we’re going to talk about that after the break. So if your organization doesn’t have, you know, you might be a small organization without a social media policy as it relates to prospect research, apra can can help you out. We’ll get to that, okay, i like you’re like you’re like, you’re guideline, all right, we have just a couple minutes before a break, like a minute and a half a minute what’s the next network you want to talk about? Was it twitter waken talk about twitter that one probably won’t take long. You know, twitter is one of those social media platforms that people might be using, especially these days with regard to their politics, so the weather yet, and that might be important for you to know about depending on what type of organization that you are. So, again, if if knowing someone’s politics is important, you know, maybe checking out to see if they’ve got a twitter feed might be something you want to check out. Okay? Seems like you, twitter, you’re less likely to find something compromising it’s possible, but less likely to find. Something compromising on it. Okay, let’s, take a break. When we come back. I got, of course, i got live. Listen. Love podcast, pleasantries and affiliate affections, naturally, but also will get into the apra ethics ethics statement little about that, and we’ll see what else we had to 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 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 guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m dana ostomel, ceo of deposit, a gift. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Welcome back and i feel like starting with the with the shoutouts, teo, to our listeners, i’m going to start with facebook, but i don’t because it’s a fairly new formats only second time have dahna facebook live, so thank you, everybody on facebook! I believe i have shouted out everybody who joined us. Thank you for being there. Can i ask you to do? Ah one or two things like it and share it like it and share it. I think we know how to do that. I’d be grateful on facebook. Thank you very much. Live listen, love, we’ve got two in germany, guten dog, multiple. So multiple germany and seoul, seoul, south korea, always checking in so soul you’ve been on our minds, obviously a lot on your haserot comes a ham nida coming back into the u s, tampa, florida woodbridge, new jersey, matthews, north carolina and staten island and new york, new york, multiple new york city. Thank you. Multiple manhattan, new york appreciate that staten island. Thank you for being with us. Love it only to burroughs i don’t know. Queens, brooklyn, bronx. All right. Next time we have had a show way had a couple shows. Where was all five boroughs? And then, of course, the podcast pleasantries over twelve thousand listeners. Listen, that’s, why? You know, i don’t know if you put two and two together. It takes me over seven years to do that. But that’s, why? We have such loyal sponsors because there are over twelve thousand people listening to the podcast. So you know how grateful i am because it makes the show so much more fulfilling when there are sponsors, you know, helping me out. Basically mean that how else can i say it? So thank you for listening. You are attracting the sponsors to the show, and i do mean attracting the ones i announced it on the three fiftieth coming up. Wagner, cpas, that’s the only definite one. And i said there may be another one and there may still talking them, but they’re coming to me. So thank you, that’s over twelve thousand podcast listeners each week pleasantries to you and the affiliate affections to our am and fm station listeners through out the country. I’m not sure where you are, but what am i saying? I know exactly where you are and i even know when each station puts me in their schedule. Us, i prefer the us, puts us in their schedule, someone our block during the week, and i’m glad that on on your station, it could be saturday morning might be tuesday night, whenever affiliate affections to our am and fm listeners. Thank you for being with us, thanks to your stations for carrying non-profit radio multi-channel amy’s have award will love that were multi-channel we’ve been for years, and now we get into channel, i’ve discovered facebook only took me seven years, cutting edge, cutting edge what we call a pioneer. Yeah, right. Um okay. So, maria simple. Thank you for being patient again. The patient prospect. Researcher. Thank you. A lot of gabbing today. I’m off on tangents. All right? I feel like a facebook pioneer. I know. I know you’re not giving yourself enough credit. You’ve. You’ve been on facebook for a long time, it’s. Just that you’ve not been using this brand spanking new life from large. Yeah, mother it’s quite brand spanking new, but thank you. Thank you for you. That’s the point. Thank you for driving home that point and character chicken master just joined karen. Welcome on facebook. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. Okay, so we’re talking about the ethics of prospect research. Oh, my god. There’s tons more. How come they don’t show up on my phone? Because why? Oh, they’re in a group. That shit. Oh, my god. There’s! Hundreds. Well, dozens more scores, more than dozens scores more. Uh, okay, i don’t think i should do all those. But thank you. If you’re on facebook and i did not shut you out from from beth granger toe. Harriet steinberg to melinda roth. Epstein to eric mendelson. Thank you for being with us. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, so i maria i’m all right. So where do we go from here? Let’s talk about the apra s o apra aperribay pr. It started out as the american prospect research association. Then it became the association of professional researchers for advancement. Now, it’s just apra. So they’ve done to me that’s an abandonment of roots. They’re just apurate. Apurate. Apurate doesn’t mean anything to me probono actually ready haserot along they’ve been after all along i know what stood for different things. It’s i don’t know. I object to this rewrite of history like next it’s going to be we’re gonna be taking down statues of george washington and thomas jefferson in-kind i was around, i was around when they made that shift. And this this is the reason for it. They used to be just the american prospect research association. But now the association really envelope people from all parts of the world. So they wanted to be able to, you know, have that reflective of their their membership base. So now it’s, the association of professional researchers it’s like aarp. They don’t want to be the association. Of retired american association of retired persons anymore haven’t been for years. It’s history rewrite. I don’t mind change, but when it benefits me but it never does that’s why the world has to change without my consent i don’t know what this is, what i don’t i don’t grasp all right, let’s talk about their code of ethics anyway, so they have this ethical code and it does relate to social media specifically so right. So one thing i see is a balance for trying to balance the individual’s right to privacy with the needs of the institution that i like doing that. Yes, he did. And really, it is. It is very, very important that that that balance is capped for sure. Okay, yes. So drilling down on that. What about friends? They have they talk about. Should you be a friend to potential donors? People, you’re researching that’s a no, no. Right on. Yes. In terms of the essex statement that apple put forth that that that is correct, they would really recommend that you do not friend were really enter into a personal relationship with prospects or donors. Now lincoln could be, you know, a completely different platform, right? Because now we’re talking about a business social platform. Okay, right? All right, so but no friend. What about what? This seems like middle ground. What about following somebody on twitter? If you’re a prospect researcher, yeah, i mean, i think that that would be okay to be a follower on twitter because, you know, they’re again twitter feeds are very public, and so, you know, i don’t think there’ll be any issue. They’re okay, but you need to disclose who you are, that’s also in the statement in these guidelines, you need to disclose that you’re a prospect researcher for the organization. Do you need to say that? Um, well, you know, sometimes people will individually have ah, personal twitter account so that i feel the only twitter account that you’re following people from them, then you know, that is it, you know? So i think you have to start looking at your staff and determining, you know which staff members are on twitter hour? Is that the organization that it’s going to be a follower of that individual on twitter and again? It’s two very different to two very different things. Okay, okay, what about corroboration if you find something on a social network, is there an obligation as a prospect researcher to corroborate it from us from another source, or, like almost like a journalist or no? Yeah, if you can, absolutely ah again, is it personal versus business information? That’s going to probably make a difference in terms of what you’re going to try and source in terms of corroboration. But if you know you are, i’m thinking about having somebody make a major gift to your organization and you stumble across something on social media that gives you an indication that this might not be the right time to make that because you might have seen something going on on somebody’s personal facebook feed. You might just double check with you, noah boardmember that knows them well or something like that and just ask, you know, if they know anything about the timing is still a good time to talk to that individual. Okay, maria simple. We gotta leave it there. You’ll find the apra social media ethics statement at apra home dot or ge a after home dot org’s maria sample. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Absolutely. You’ll find her at the prospect finder and she’s at maria simple. You should be following her on twitter. If you’re not latto it’s your life, okay, next week, talking about risk your institutional funders. That’s going to very interesting. Plus, amy sample ward returns, and you gotta let me know what we’re doing. 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 re be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we b e spelling dot com, more sponsors to come, our creative producers playing meyerhoff sam labor, which is the line user, shows social media, is by susan chavez, and this very cool music is by scott stein of brooklyn. Be 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 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 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 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 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.