Tag Archives: Solicitation

Nonprofit Radio for October 11, 2021: Next Year’s Plan For Your Year-End Donors

My Guest:

Poonam Prasad: Next Year’s Plan For Your Year-End Donors

We’re in the 4th quarter and you’re expecting a lot of fundraising revenue. You want those donors with you next year and beyond. Poonam Prasad has the strategies to make that happen. She’s president of Prasad Consulting & Research.

 

 

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[00:00:10.84] spk_4:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio

[00:01:41.44] spk_1:
Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast and oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of Ruba malaria if you made me hot with the idea that you missed this week’s show next year’s plan for your year end donors. We’re in the fourth quarter and you’re expecting a lot of fundraising revenue. You want those donors with you next year and beyond. non Prasad has the strategies to make that happen. She’s president of Prasad consulting and research on tony state too planned giving accelerator. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. It’s a pleasure to welcome to the show for the first time Hunan Prasad. She is founder and president of Prasad consulting and research, providing board and staff training, audit, major gift capital campaign and publication services to non profits. She’s on the executive committee of the Giving institute, leading consultants to nonprofits before nonprofit work. She was an investigative reporter and worked in journalism, advertising and pr in India south Korea Hong kong the West Indies and the U. S. Her company is at Prasad consulting dot com and she’s at prasad c Welcome to the show. Prasad opponent. Prasad. Welcome to nonprofit radio

[00:01:53.44] spk_0:
Thank you Tony. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

[00:02:02.54] spk_1:
My pleasure to have you. Thank you. There’s so many so many facades. I guys called um facade instead of being um so you’re in you’re in new york city, right? You’re coming

[00:02:05.65] spk_0:
to us from new york? Yes. Coming to you from downtown Manhattan

[00:02:09.30] spk_1:
downtown. What neighborhood?

[00:02:11.54] spk_0:
Oh, east mid down. Sorry.

[00:02:13.84] spk_1:
Oh, now you moved in downtown anymore.

[00:02:16.17] spk_0:
Yes. Now we moved, we moved recently near Grand Central Station.

[00:02:20.74] spk_1:
Okay. And your Grand Central. And how about your home? Where where, where is your home?

[00:02:24.55] spk_0:
Also in midtown,

[00:02:26.08] spk_1:
midtown, midtown east. Also,

[00:02:28.39] spk_0:
midtown east. Also. Okay,

[00:03:06.04] spk_1:
East side of new york city. For your business and your home. Wonderful. So we’re talking about this year’s fourth quarter donors and how we want to treat them and work with them So that we hold on to them into 2022 and beyond. So just, you know, because we know the donor attrition is a big problem. It’s a appalling somewhere around 75% annual donor attrition rate. What do you see? You know, generally that, uh, nonprofits could do better about holding on to their year end donors

[00:06:17.64] spk_0:
actually, tony uh, the attrition rate or the leaky bucket is almost, uh, from three donors, you get down to 1.5 or from two donors, you could be down to one next year. So for all the efforts that you’re putting in to bringing these donors in. If you think about, you know, we were a research firm. So we often get people asking us, can you find me new donors? Can you find me new donors? I’m sure we can find them new donors. But the point is, once they’ve got them in, they have spent so much effort and time and money on getting them in. And then if you don’t steward them, if you don’t get to know them and you don’t work with them, then you’re going to lose them by next year. Um, and that’s the tragedy of uh, fundraising. You know, that is really very inefficient. So I suggest only just two little tips, the donors that you get in at the end of the year. There are only two things you need to do with them. one is get to know them. And then the 2nd 1 help them to get to know you. So show them that you are doing the right thing with their money. You know, the impact report reporting, telling them what you did with their money and how you could not have done it without their money. And the second thing learn about them. You know, if you were trying to become friends with someone, you went to a party and you met somebody and you said, you know, this was a really interesting person. Uh, they came to my birthday party, they gave me a present. I would like to be more friends with them. Would you not write them or thank you not? Would you not invite them to a body afterwards. Would you not say it? Let me have coffee with you. These are simple things that we do in everyday life. But then when you’re the executive director of a of a charity, a little social service charity, you said, I don’t like to do fundraising? Well, it’s not it’s human relations. These are people who gave you something they didn’t have to give you. They could have bought a boat, they could have bought a car, they could have bought a dress, they could have bought a rug for their living room. No, they gave that money to you. Shouldn’t you be grateful? Don’t we tell our Children you get a thank you gift for Aunt Mabel. You never met Aunt Mabel writer. Thank you. Not sit down here and right, right, and a thank you note, she sent you this gift. It’s simple. It’s it’s it’s not it’s not it doesn’t even have to be about fundraising. Yes. A lot of small agencies don’t have fundraisers, don’t have dedicated development people, but this is not even about development, This is about standard manners, you know, standard courtesies, things that we grew up with. But when it becomes, oh my goodness, it’s my donors. I don’t like doing this. I’m afraid to ask them for more. You know, just thank them first before you think about asking them for more, you know, and don’t wait too long to figure it out. You know, have the plan now, you’re getting the money in 40% of the money is going to come between October and November and December, that means it’s coming in now, October. You know, and in December you’re gonna get 20% of your money. So what is your plan for January? What is it that you’re gonna do?

[00:07:17.04] spk_1:
Okay, well, we’re gonna we’re gonna get there, we’re gonna get there. Hold on. Um So you made a couple of things, points that I want to amplify about it. Just being a matter of common courtesy in in a lot of respects, and it being about relationship building. All right. So, you’ve got, you know, in in in corporate marketing, there’s the idea of get a finger grab a hand. You know, someone walked into a Starbucks, they bought a coffee. Well, Starbucks doesn’t only sell coffee. They sell music, they sell food, they sell coffee accessories, they sell a tire, right? But not to mention they sell an environment. Uh, so I think there’s a lot we can learn from that. You know, get a finger grab a hand. So someone, let’s let’s take the donor that’s made their first gift, Right? Because that’s the tougher one. That’s the that’s the easiest one to lose

[00:07:20.79] spk_0:
that 1st 1st. That’s the that’s the most fragile relationship,

[00:07:56.14] spk_1:
right? So, we’re gonna start with that. I’m giving you the toughest hypothetical, right? So, all right. So we’ve got a bunch of first time donors, we had a very successful fourth quarter in donor acquisition. We brought in a good number. What however good number is defined by My listeners. That could be 12. It could be 1200. It could be 12,000. We’ve got a bunch of new first time donors. You started to allude to, you know, what’s your plan? What’s your plan for january? What’s your first recommendation for? What we’re gonna do with this, this nice rich cadre of first time donors?

[00:07:59.40] spk_0:
Well, my first recommendation is of course they didn’t within 48 hours to get a tax

[00:08:03.07] spk_1:
receipt. If it’s

[00:08:04.11] spk_0:
Over a certain amount that you need to give them a tax two

[00:08:06.41] spk_1:
$100, requires a receipt. How about your about just a simple acknowledgment letter

[00:08:20.04] spk_0:
Also, you start then you start with the next. So then depending on how much money they got They sent you, you need to figure out who they are. If it’s over $1,000, you need to send it to somebody to research somebody in your office or somebody you outsource it to. You need to figure out who this donor is and why they gave to you.

[00:08:34.84] spk_1:
Well, all right. But for some non profits that could be, if it’s over $100,.

[00:09:16.54] spk_0:
Yes. If it’s over $100, you might wait till January and take the whole batch and screen them. So we are now screening a batch for a social service agency in Connecticut and we’re screening uh $690 that gave From $20 up in the last two years now. It’s late that we’re doing it now. But you know, it’s better than nothing. So ISIS suggests that, you know, we have another client that we’re doing over the pandemic. They said they had 274 new donors who gave over $500. And we’re looking for people within that Group within that cohort who would give maybe $10,000. They actually have people, we just finished that project and they actually have people who would give them, not just $10,000, but $100,000.

[00:09:46.04] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. All right. Let’s take a step at a time. So We’re sending our acknowledgment within within 48 hours. And if the tax receipt is required, then you might incorporate that into your acknowledgement or you might send something separate. Alright. We’re saying thank you fast. Now, is there is there nothing else between, you know, suppose that’s in october or november, donor. Nothing else between that and screening them in january. Don’t we want to we want to be involved with

[00:10:41.94] spk_0:
them. Yes. Yes. So then you start then you start with the seven. Thank you. Then you start with the seven. Thank you because this person has given you a a donation and depending on their level of giving and the effort you have to put in. You start with sending them your annual report, your newsletter. Welcome email. Some some agencies have a three series of welcome emails. And so you do that. Maybe you send them a donor survey which they respond to and tell you what aspect of their uh of your program they are interested in. That will help you a lot uh to know you know, we have a social service agency. They do senior care, they do middle school education, they do uh other kinds of adoption. So now which program is that person interested in? They can tell you or you can find out given are based on when you do the screening and when you do the research, you will see what else they’re giving to. And that will give you a clue as to which part of your program they care about.

[00:11:03.94] spk_1:
All right, well, you also have a clue based on what they gave to. Yes.

[00:11:04.45] spk_0:
Yes. If if

[00:11:05.88] spk_1:
if you know a lot of people don’t designate a gift. I agree. I agree with you. But if they designate their gift to a particular program, then you know where their affinity is.

[00:11:14.69] spk_0:
Yes. And you know that in the database right away. Of course.

[00:11:33.44] spk_1:
Absolutely. Yes. It’s important to preserve what people give to. Just like. It’s important to preserve the donors survey results that you suggest? Absolutely. Okay. What what might be. What what might we be soliciting uh information about in that in that follow up donor survey? You want to get to know folks better

[00:12:47.54] spk_0:
which aspect of the program they care about how they heard of your agency. You know uh Would they ever would they attend a webinar? If if you had one would they be willing to travel and come and see your facility? Uh You know is there a particular staff person that you know they have met with or or they know about you know each each agency is different. So you would ask different questions based on what you want to know about them. Uh what would help you? So those would be for instance with this where there are three different uh we have an irish theater company. Well they would want to know which which playwright you know with their favorite if you’re a music or something you might want to know which music they care about. If you’re a medical agency might we used to send out service and say which disease do you want to know more about? So we can send you newsletters about that disease. So you know based on your interest based on your work. You ask the right questions.

[00:12:49.08] spk_1:
Okay. And you also mentioned the seven. Thank you.

[00:12:52.23] spk_0:
Yes

[00:12:53.93] spk_1:
I say a little more about your seven. Thank

[00:15:37.44] spk_0:
you. This is this is my mantra that I have been teaching. You know I’ve been teaching at N. Y. U. And also at Columbia and I teach workshops all the time. And this is one of my mantra that I teach. And now my students have started deciding it back to me. So and it seems like oh my God you’re going to say thank you thank you thank you. It’s not that you have to be creative. So you might send them the tax receipt which is the first thank you. And then depending on after that you might have uh the executive director writer. Thank you. You might have the development director writer. Thank you. You might have the program director. We have a little archaeological excavation. You know there are two main archaeologists, archaeologists involved with it. and depending on which one uh is uh you know closest to that person who send the gift. We’ll have them right appears on the on the thank you note which we draw for them for some people. I might call them and say you know because I’m in new york city I might call them to say thank you. I have received your gift. It’ll take a while for us to process it. But in the meantime I want you to know that your check was received and we’re so grateful and the excavation will start on such and such a date and we’ll send you pictures and this is our facebook page and you know communicate with them. Uh one of my friends uh sent her son to a boarding school and she sent a little gift where she’d been sending it to the local school all the time. But now because it was a boarding school, the parents suddenly she got a call from my parents really wanted, why is the parent calling me when she said, you know, I know you sent a gift and I wanted to tell you thanks from the school. But also I want to tell you that I was yesterday at the tennis match in which your son played and my son is captain of the team and he played so well and we were so proud of my goodness, do you think that lady is not going to give another gift after that? I mean it’s just brilliant and it wasn’t even a staff member. It was a volunteer. I have I have another agency this year. There was a crisis and people ask me and I happened to have insight into that particular problem. They said what should we give to? I said, oh, this is a great agency. I’ve been, you know involved with them as a volunteer for a long time. You know, they use the money very well. They’re doing really great work. They sent the money. I sent the money. None of us have ever gotten a thank you note. Now they’re doing the work. They have social media, they have facebook, they have Lincoln they have a blast. They’re sending us the, all the information about what they’re doing and we are so happy. They’re doing it. But they didn’t do God one Thank You. And one of the donors sent it from a donor advised fund. He’s got no thank you, let alone seven.

[00:15:43.44] spk_1:
It’s time for a break.

[00:16:43.64] spk_2:
Turn to communications. I’m on their email list and they said something this week. That’s very interesting. They talk about seeing good news stories on social media, uh, specifically linked in, in this case and the uh, frequent lament that people will, will comment that you’ll never find stories like this in the mainstream media. In fact turned two points out that many, many of these good news stories originated in mainstream media. Um, you know, some are, we’re in newspapers, others might have gotten exposure from national outlets like the new york times or CNN, or one of the major networks. But the point is a lot of these stories originate and in some mainstream media and then make their way to social media. So what’s that mean for you? It means there are a

[00:16:44.64] spk_3:
lot of journalists

[00:16:58.94] spk_2:
that are interested in good news stories that maybe just generate a laugh or a smile or it’s, it’s um, it’s more of a story about work that a nonprofit has done.

[00:17:02.04] spk_3:
So the journalists

[00:17:03.33] spk_1:
are out there.

[00:17:04.28] spk_2:
They are hungry for these good news stories. If

[00:17:06.79] spk_3:
you’ve got something

[00:17:07.85] spk_2:
like that.

[00:17:09.74] spk_1:
Look internally,

[00:17:10.74] spk_3:
if you’ve got some good news

[00:17:27.94] spk_2:
turn to, can help you get it noticed right, help you craft that good news story and then get it exposed in all the outlets you’ve heard me talk about. So they finish up this on this. I’m choking up. That’s, that’s how that’s how, uh, much this touches me,

[00:17:33.04] spk_3:
they finish up there

[00:17:58.64] spk_2:
their email by saying there are lots of journalists out there that are ready to give good news stories a look despite what you may read on linkedin. So, you know, they’ve got their eyes on the media market. Turn to communications. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C O. Now back to next year’s plan for your year end donors.

[00:19:01.14] spk_1:
Yeah. I mean, that’s that is a very bad practice To have gone. Well, you know, some folks say 24 hours, you’re, you’re being more generous 48 hours, that’s still fine. But If it goes much longer than that and you’re, you’re saying it’s been months or whatever, you know, that, uh, to not acknowledge every single gift, I don’t care if these are $3 gifts. I don’t care if the dollar and a half. It still deserves an acknowledgement. You just never know. Someone might be testing you with a small dollar amount and really who gives a dollar and a half anyway, so that, that’s, you know, that’s a hyperbolic on the low end, right? Uh, but if someone gives you $5, they might be testing you, they might have capacity to give 5000 or 50,000. They may have capacity. They may feel whether they can’t or or they know they can, but they’re they’re trying you out every gift deserves acknowledgement. So when you were just describing that’s very poor practice.

[00:19:08.04] spk_0:
Well, unfortunately, the excuse is that they are because they’re doing such good work. They are understaffed and their non profit. So they don’t have capacity.

[00:19:34.24] spk_1:
That doesn’t, that doesn’t sell. That’s a that’s a nonstarter. You need to invest in your organizations to the extent that you can thank people. Thanking people is not overhead, It’s not worthless. It’s it’s an administrative investment. It’s not an expensive, it’s it’s an investment in the relationships that you’re talking about. You mentioned earlier, you know, absolutely relationship building, if that’s an investment thanking

[00:21:02.24] spk_0:
people. Absolutely, and and that’s how one needs to think about it. And and you know, the board members, the staff, the executive director, everybody needs to be aware that how important this is. Now, another thing that people ask us a lot is we got a gift from a donor advised fund and we don’t have any access to the donor. So we don’t know how to thank them and we want to know who they are, what they are and you know, they’re freaking every sort of possible way of trying to google it to trying to get us to do it. This is so simple. This these these two donors who gave to this charity that gave through the donor advised fund that I know about, they are friends of the board members if they put a list in front of the board members and said, you know, we got a gift from. So and so family fund and unfortunately we don’t know how to thank them. They said that maybe they sent a thank you note to the to the donor advised fund agency. Somebody would speak up or you look in your database and say, oh, they came to the gala. This is the same person who came to the gala and sat at, you know, board member access table. So he’s gonna know this person. So let’s tell him that your friend gave us a gift even though there was no gala, even though there was just a virtual gala and he still gave us a gift. He didn’t even sit at your table.

[00:21:24.64] spk_1:
All right. So those, right. Those are, those are good ideas. But there is frustration among, among nonprofits getting donor advised fund gifts when you know, okay, so you’re right, try try your board query your database. But there are gifts that come that sometimes that folks can’t identify and that I know that is a frustration among nonprofits.

[00:21:56.24] spk_0:
Yes. But you know, more and more people have who have set up donor advised funds want people to know who is giving. It’s, it’s less and less about being anonymous. Now, people are going back to setting up foundations or entities from which they can give, uh, and be known and they want that because they want to add their credibility to the gift. They want people to know that a person whom they know give to this charity because it helps the charity.

[00:22:28.74] spk_1:
It does. Right. But there are, there are donors who would not agree with you. But I do, I agree. But there are always some donors that are going to remain anonymous. And I mean, I’ve always thought, you know, focus on the donors who you can identify. I understand the frustration for those. You cannot, they may come to you through a facebook fundraising event and facebook doesn’t share the information. They might come to you from a donor advised fund. That is not a name that you can track, uh, focus on the folks that you can thank and for the donor advised fund. Of course we should be sending a letter to the fund. Right, thanking asking them to forward the letter onto the anonymous donors.

[00:23:12.94] spk_0:
Exactly. And they would, I’m sure the same donor, the same donor, the friend of mine that gave because I said, oh, this is a good charity could give to them. It’s also sent to another charity in the same space. And he got his seven. Thank you. He actually told me I got seven. Thank you. So, he said, you know, the development director wrote, the executive director wrote the board member wrote, they sent him an annual report. You know, they invited him to an event. They sent him different things. You know, I mean reports, personalized. Yeah. All right. I mean, you could take a little video and send it to the person, you know, that you can do

[00:24:18.44] spk_1:
personalized video is a terrific idea. Um, I’ll give a shout out to a company that’s not expensive. Bond euro bongiorno dot com, bong boro easy personalized videos. You shoot a one minute video and you say thank you. And you can, you can be walking, you can have any background you want to know the production value is not the concern, sincerity, The genuineness. That’s the concern. And you do it in a 45 seconds or one minute video. You sent it right back to the right to the person. You can do it immediately. You could do it the next day. So, and Bongiorno is by no means the only personalized video platform out there. But Um, yeah, you’re right. Personalized video is a good one. all right. So you mentioned these screenings. So now we’re now we’re a little longer on now. We’re into January. Right? We’ve done our activities for the fourth quarter. Now we’re conveying into January. What kind of information uh, you’re looking for in a, in a screening. Does it have to be a commercial screening? You know, what are we,

[00:25:09.24] spk_0:
what are we looking at? You could, you could do research or you could just go for a screening depending on the number of donors. If you have seven donors, you know, you just give them to somebody to research who has tools like screening tools and research tools and ask them to do it for you and that’s all you need, You don’t need a sophisticated screening. But if you have 670 donors or something that I knew and they were given maybe over $20 or $50, then you certainly should have a screening down. But don’t try to do it yourself because then when you get it back, you have this information and you have no idea what to do with it because there are mismatches in the screening. It’s an automated process. There are mismatches in the screening. You know, there’ll be a lot of tony-martignetti is and Putin presides in there and you have to make

[00:25:30.54] spk_1:
sure that I don’t know if there are such good examples who not pursued and tony-martignetti are not very common names, but there’ll be a lot of there’ll be a lot of smith’s and uh smiths and joneses et cetera. Okay.

[00:25:32.68] spk_0:
Yes. And and you know you being me is how many food and presents? All

[00:25:39.12] spk_1:
right. There aren’t too many tony-martignetti is I would be surprised.

[00:25:50.84] spk_0:
Okay. In fact it’s more confusing when there are only two or three because then you really begin to think this is your person and then it turns out it’s not your person.

[00:25:53.14] spk_1:
Right? Okay. So you’re you’re you’re caution against doing it on your own or I mean if you’re going to do it on your own. You said if you had just seven or so. You know, you’re not gonna hire an agency for that. But you just, the point is you need to be careful that you’ve got the right person

[00:26:08.50] spk_0:
right? Like checking,

[00:26:10.24] spk_1:
check middle initials, check addresses, check whatever you do know against what you found to make sure you’re, you’re dealing with the right person.

[00:27:04.64] spk_0:
Well, you can, you can outsource, you know, a little bit of work every month with somebody with some research firm. We do that all the time. Uh, you know, it’s not that we do it all, you know, in one go and finish. You know, we have like an arrangement where if somebody new comes in, gives more than $1000 get more than $500. Whatever matters to them, they send it over to us and we screen them, research them, give them back information on that person. Okay. Okay. But it’s geared to small agencies. It’s geared to small agencies so that, you know, because otherwise what happens is the Harvard University’s and the big, big who have seven researchers get all the big donors because they have the tools and they have the staff. So you, you do need to implement some of the techniques that the top fundraising organizations you

[00:27:13.64] spk_1:
mentioned, you mentioned before screening and research tools there, are there some out there that you can suggest that folks can use

[00:28:02.94] spk_0:
on their own. Yes. You could, you could make a substitution with with something like ivy or donor search and try to do some work on your own. You could look at the, you could look at the linkedin profile of the person. If you know, you know, I mean small simple things. You could google them of course. Uh small things that you know, you could look at if you know where they work. You could look at the bio most law firms have the lawyers while on on the website many firms have the, you know, employees, bio senior employees bio doctors. There are free sites for looking at doctors to see what kind of specialty does the doctor have. Is it something that’s relevant to my cause?

[00:28:05.45] spk_1:
Yeah. Good. Alright, right. If you can find the person’s company firm that they work for or practice. Okay. And you mentioned I wave and donor search.

[00:28:31.94] spk_0:
Yes. These are subscription services. So you have to pay a little bit uh, you know, usually it’s in your subscription and you can check out your donors through that. And the aggregate information of other gifts that the organization has received. Other organizations have received from the same donor. Okay. Right. Right.

[00:28:37.14] spk_1:
Other charities that the person is given to us. So then you start to get a little profile of person. All right. So you can have

[00:29:03.54] spk_0:
to be careful because of the person your donor is in new york and the person, a person with the same name is giving in texas, you have to be careful to see why would my donor given texas? Maybe it’s another person or maybe he went to school in texas and he is giving in texas. Or he’s giving to a senior center in texas because my daughter has a mother there who’s in that home. So you know you need to be a bit intelligent about.

[00:29:30.84] spk_1:
Yeah right with that. With that caution you gotta you gotta that caveat. You gotta be uh certain that you’re dealing with the right person. Otherwise you’re going down you’re gonna start talking to the person about their gifts to texas. And they’re going to say I don’t know what you’re talking about and then then you’re gonna be embarrassed. So all right. All right. Um Okay so screening is a possibility. Good. You can engage your company. You can do some on your own. What what what what are we gonna do from what we learned from our screening now? What?

[00:31:54.44] spk_0:
So there’s the thing I mean you know we do research where research for and we send research to our clients. The question is how do you read this research? What does it mean to you? What what is the interpretation you get out of a research report on? Suppose we write a little bio on this person. So what what what what is the strategy that comes out of this research. So the first thing that indicates higher giving is age. So anyone over the age of 60 or 65 has more disposable income. They paid their mortgage, they probably paid their children’s college education. They’re beginning to think about their own, you know, legacy and they’re beginning to give more generously. So 60, you have a better chance of getting a higher upgrading their gifts before that. People are still on that little hamster wheel, you know, increasing their mortgage, buying a little bigger house, sending their Children to a better school. You know, getting them into college, they just often do not have time unless they are very community minded and they might give to their local community or their college or things like that. But but they become more Uh philanthropic, more generous generally after the age of 16. Now, there are always exceptions. The other thing there are a lot of people look for as you know, being in plan giving is people without Children, because people without Children do not have that usual legacy is, oh, I’m leaving good Children into the world. Yeah, that’s great. But when you don’t have Children, you have to really think, what is it that I am leaving? What footprint am I living in this world that I lived and who benefited because I lived And those people take a little more care and thought and and usually we’ll try to make an impact in a different way and you can help them do that and make them happy. And you know, there there’s a lot of studies that say people who give are happier people who give actually benefit more from their gifts than the person receiving. So it’s at that age, particularly when you have that reflective time for reflection that we see better gifts.

[00:32:02.64] spk_1:
It’s time for tony steak too

[00:32:59.84] spk_2:
planned giving accelerator. I’m starting the promotion again this time for the January 2022 class, I have accelerated the accelerator. It’s no longer a 12-month course. It is now a six-month course. I will teach you step by step, Everything that was in the 12 month course, but we’re gonna, we’re gonna step it up six month course. I’ll teach you everything you need to know about starting your planned giving program and you’re not only learning from me, you’re learning from your peers, folks who are similarly situated, they’ve got the same frustrations, they’ve got the same tensions bandwidth constraints as you do. You learn from them, They’re your, they become your friends, your allies, your safety net in planned giving accelerator. So if you want to get your plan giving program started,

[00:33:03.14] spk_3:
You want to start in 2022,

[00:33:05.64] spk_1:
you can start

[00:33:06.28] spk_3:
with plan Giving accelerator. I

[00:33:19.34] spk_2:
hope you’ll join me. All the info you need is that planned Giving accelerator dot com. That is tony stick to, we’ve got boo koo

[00:33:20.86] spk_1:
but loads more

[00:33:21.61] spk_2:
time for next

[00:33:23.10] spk_3:
year’s plan for your

[00:33:24.59] spk_1:
year end donors,

[00:35:46.14] spk_0:
then there are other things like education for one thing, if you know the education you can no other people who went to that school. So maybe you can have them go on. Maybe have a board member went there so you can build a relationship more strongly. But also of course education indicates more disposable income. So you begin to see when you build a profile of the person you say, oh well they went to the school from that area, They studied social work or they studied history or that tells you something about what they are interested in. Right? And then there’s the question of, Although I said that people who don’t have Children, you know, are very sought after by plan giving professionals, on the other hand, people in their lifetime are more generous who have Children over the age of six Because they’re trying to inculcate good values in their Children. They start to see the value of a community. So there are studies that show that people who have Children over the age of six, there could be 6-18, they could be 18-24. But a family unit, a couple usually has more disposable income. It could be a same sex couple or a heterogeneous couple. But the heterosexual couple. But the point is because there are two incomes in that family, they usually have more disposable income. So so that that’s important when you see that. So those are little things that you’re looking at. And then of course there’s the interest, what else they give to, You know, how old are they? Was it their parents that also gave to this charity or this type of charity? I have a I have a friend and he gave to a university music program. And I said to him, why do you give, you didn’t even go to that university? Why are you giving to that music program? He said, well, I became friends with the dean. They invited me to an event. I went on a trip with them to Austria to listen to classical music. And he said in the end, you know, my father died when I was very young. And the one thing I remember is sitting on his lap when he played the piano. So the piano music to him was, and he doesn’t have any Children. So, you know, that’s what makes him happy giving to students who play the piano

[00:36:20.23] spk_1:
reminds us of course reminds him of his dad. And he hopes that that uh those young students will have Children of their own and their those Children will sit on their laps the way he sat on his dad’s lap. All right. Those are good. Those are, those are valuable insights that we can, we can get from uh, that we that we can get from the screening. So now going back to what you had suggested earlier when you said get them to know you and let them get to know, uh, sorry, get to know them and let them get to know you. So how do we do the second part of that now that we have this information, valuable insights? How do we let these new donors get to know us?

[00:37:37.13] spk_0:
Well, we talked about the series of three emails that welcome them. We have invitations. Uh, and of course in this environment, maybe you can’t invite them so easily, but you could still send them a video. Now. We had a homeless, uh, organized agency for homeless people last year that we were working with. And they sent out a video of their new building and somebody sent them $25,000 just from that video because it was the Executive director going through the building and saying, you know, we had such hopes for this building. We finally got it built. We’ve got all these people were going to bring into this building and the person was so touched. He was also a senior citizen. He had money. He felt like, oh, let me help. There are other people out there my age who do not have housing. And here is somebody who’s an agency that’s providing it. And that video, you know, a small video that they didn’t even actually seriously ask for money in it. They just said, and if you’d like to, you know, there was a little bit and

[00:37:44.23] spk_1:
well, it it touched it touched somebody. Well, video can do that. It’s powerful that way.

[00:39:16.22] spk_0:
All right. And of course a tour with the executive director. So you’re really getting to know the person, you know, face to face. So as best you can in this environment. You know, it’s a trusting relationship. So by video you’re seeing them as best you can. The other thing is of course you could set up coffee with them and people are much more accessible now because they’re not going out. So people are taking calls even if they are not. Yeah. In where at home, they’re still taking calls from wherever they are. They’re doing zoom with you. They want to be conducted. All of us are starved for human contact. We took these things for granted. And now suddenly we realized how valuable our community is. You know, I walk out, I’m an anonymous new york city right where nobody really knows anybody and you walk on the street and nobody should recognize. You know, it’s not like that anymore. The moment I walk out on the street, my neighbors are standing out there, they’re also walking. There’s no nowhere to go and nothing to do except to go for a while. So they’re all out there walking and they all suddenly know each other. So you realize how important your community is. So do you think that the area neighborhood association and things that are being done in our neighborhood are getting more attention. Sure, more people are planting, helping to plant in the parks, more people are helping to give to the local community association. Suddenly that’s becoming more important. So something that’s good for the small agencies.

[00:39:18.39] spk_1:
So engagement, Yeah. Uh, engagement at whatever level it might be something communal and community and in, in face to face,

[00:40:10.61] spk_0:
yes, might be something come and paint a mural on your wall of your, you know, of your agency. We have a, a friend of mine runs a clear art center community, you know, they make pottery, they got the local artists together to come and paint the wall even urine Corbett, they could still do that. You wear your mask, You come and paint the world their artistic. So you could plant flowers in your garden, invite them to do that, invite them to do outdoor things in the local park. You could have a gathering of rooftops. People have been doing gatherings or some of our clients have been doing gatherings or rooftops whatever you can do outdoors, especially in the summer. And then also we were talking, well, we were

[00:40:14.43] spk_1:
talking about january, but that’s okay. Well into spring

[00:40:55.71] spk_0:
now january, you could do a lunch and learn, which is a good time to do a lunch and learn. And that also gives you an information back because the people who attend, you do the lunch and learn on different programs and people sign up based on the interest. So then, you know, well this donor signed up for this lunch and learn on this program. So obviously that’s what they care about or they might write to you and say I didn’t, I really wanted to attend this, but I couldn’t. So you send them the recording of that lunch. That’s another, uh, value of having something which is recorded, which you’re doing on zoom. You can record it like, just like your radio programs, tony

[00:41:15.11] spk_1:
I’m a, I’m a big fan of big fan of audio. I think it’s very intimate medium, yep. All right. So we’ve, we’ve, we’ve thought through our engagement, it might be something in real life. It might be something virtual. I love. I mean, you gave a lot of good ideas. Um, now we need to plan for the next solicitation.

[00:41:21.53] spk_0:
Now

[00:41:49.61] spk_1:
we’re in, we’re in like the third quarter of 3rd quarter of next year and it’s coming time to solicit the person again. They made a year into gift this year. So we’re going to presume, but they’re, they’re going to do the same. Let’s exclude the folks who maybe became major donors and they’ve got a relationship now with a gift officer. We’re not, we’re not at that level. Uh, we’re dealing with the larger group. We’re planning our fourth quarter. What should we be thinking about in terms of possibly upgrading or should we not try to upgrade in the second year. What’s your advice around planning that, that second year solicitation?

[00:45:27.39] spk_0:
Well, another thing that we never spoke about and some of my clients and colleagues will be very upset if I don’t mention it is creating a giving circle. So you could have, if you have enough donors at certain levels, you could try to upgrade them by creating a council, uh, you know, giving society, you know, so, so somebody who gave 500 you could give them an incentive to upgrade to 1000 because when they’re at 1000 they’ll get such and such benefits. You know, they’ll meet somebody that they care about or they’ll get a painting or they’ll hear a concert or you’ll have some event just for them. So, so you’re constantly upgrading those who gave 500 to 1000, those who gave 1000 to 5000, those who gave 5002, 10,000. So, so a little theater client is probably going to say, oh, you know, uh, famous irish actor is going to speak with 10 of you and you only get invited to that if, if you give, you know, a little bit more than what they were already given and that and that creates a cohort of people. So they have a little sense of community because that giving society is going to meet, um, we have the example of a museum that was up. It’s a very famous glass museum called the corning Museum of Glass and it was very well supported by the corning company. But the corning company went through some very tough times and so they needed private support during that period. So they started with a giving society where people came up, they went through the museum, they were passing by on their way to Niagara Falls or they were interested in glass or whatever and they were told that if you give this much that’s great, we are very grateful. But if you give this much you’ll be invited to an event the opening of our show and guess what? We’ll fly you up in our private plane because corning had the private plan and you won’t have to drive all the way you know from new york city well and and that was something the company could no longer support the museum financially. But they had this plane which flew up with their executives and I was such a such a cashier to to fly up in the blind drain, arrive at this museum, attend this beautiful event on roman glass with food from roman times and then have the director of the museum walk you through the show. I said one of the most beautiful things that you know, I was a stuff remember trying to attend this and I thought I was wowed and and so you know you can be creative with almost anything you could if you’re a social service agency will say well I can’t do that well you know you have people in your community who will come out and provide their celebrity help to you. So you could still have somebody do a little concert or somebody, somebody from your community who’s a wonderful singer musician or something. And and it may be not relevant, but maybe their daughter was helped by your uh, you know, educational charity or their mother was served by your senior citizen center. They will do things for you. There was a person who used to come and play the piano at a senior citizen center in uptown all the way up, you know, above the Columbia University is in Morningside

[00:45:30.03] spk_1:
Heights or something, riverside

[00:46:01.08] spk_0:
riverside riverside. Yeah. You know, they’re above Colombia where the cloisters, the museum is there and nobody knew who this person was. But when we looked him up, he was a very famous pianist who used to play at the Carlyle and his mother was in the center. And so he would come up and perform. And so we asked him if he would perform and he did a concert and Steinway hall for us because he was a famous man and there are little treasures in your community. You just have to find out about them. There are little gems floating around.

[00:46:14.68] spk_1:
All right. So you like the idea of incentivizing folks to give a little give more, Even even in the 2nd year. So they were they were our, it was first year was last year. Now we’re planning for the next year incentivize them to increase even in that just in that second year. Yes,

[00:46:46.98] spk_0:
yes. And they will because you’ve been talking to them, you’ve been engaging with them in different ways and, and maybe some of them will become, you know, much higher level donors because for small agencies, a small amount can make a big difference. There is if they gave that small amount of a much larger organization, they can’t give them that personalized attention and it’s not going to make, its going to be a drop in the bucket.

[00:46:52.58] spk_1:
Yeah. There are those folks who will be more will be more generous

[00:46:56.35] spk_3:
to smaller agencies

[00:46:57.35] spk_1:
because they get a lot better treatment. They have more fulfilling relationships with a smaller organization than they would at an organization where their gift was

[00:47:07.88] spk_0:
not in their communities. They, you know, they feel closer to it.

[00:47:14.38] spk_1:
Okay. Alright then. Um, why don’t you leave us with some final thoughts please?

[00:47:54.88] spk_0:
Well, just remember about the leaky bucket. You know, it’s a, we all grew up with that song. There’s a hole in the bucket, realize a dear Liza. So just remember you are not going to let your bucket leak. You’re gonna make every effort you can to get those the donor who’s gonna fall through the cracks, Give him as much attention as I say lavish movie cultivation, whatever tactics you can think of. Whatever relationship building and getting to know you uh, thoughts and strategies that you can come up with, have a plan, learn about them and let them learn about you.

[00:48:16.47] spk_1:
Excellent. I’m gonna look, I’m going to remind myself uh refresh my memory about there’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza what do we do something like? What do we do? All right, thank you. Hernan Prasad founder and president Prasad consulting and research. The company is at prasad consulting dot com and she is at Prasad C Thank you very much. Program.

[00:48:24.37] spk_0:
Thank you Tory pleasure to talk to you.

[00:48:27.07] spk_1:
My pleasure as well.

[00:48:30.77] spk_2:
Next week engaged

[00:48:31.62] spk_3:
boards will

[00:48:32.58] spk_2:
fundraise with Michael Davidson and brian

[00:48:55.77] spk_1:
Saber from asking matters if you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Mhm. Our creative producer

[00:49:26.17] spk_4:
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 you with me next week for nonprofit radio Big Donald. profit ideas for the over 95% go out and be great. Mhm

Nonprofit Radio for August 4, 2017: Personalized Philanthropy

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Steven Meyers: Personalized Philanthropy

Steve Meyers wants your fundraising to be seriously (really!) donor-centered. What do you need to do internally? What are his 3 killer apps? How will your solicitations change? How do you count the new gifts you’ll get? Steve is author of the book “Personalized Philanthropy.” (Originally aired June 17, 2016)

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. What a cool show last week, thanks so much to scott stein and claire meyerhoff for being in the studio for non-profit radios, three hundred fiftieth great great time laughing. Lots of callers live music loved it, loved it. I hope you caught it. Thanks so much. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with pirate. Oh, genesis! If you made me hot with the idea that you missed today’s show personalized philanthropy steve myers wants your fund-raising to be seriously really donor-centric what do you need to do internally? What are his three killer aps? How will your solicitations change? How do you count the new gif ts? You’ll get stevie, though. Is author of the book personalized philanthropy that originally aired june seventeenth, twenty sixteen on tony’s take two solitude 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 supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com you should know that steve myers is no longer with the american committee for the weizmann institute of science he’s, now founder and ceo of personalized philanthropy and a member of the carter center advisory council on philanthropy. Here he is with personalized philanthropy. I’m very pleased that steve myers is here in the studio for the hour. He is vice president of the center for personalized philanthropy at the american committee for the weizmann institute of science and author of the book personalized philanthropy crash the fund-raising matrix he’s, a frequent and popular speaker. And he’s at stephen meyers eight six three s t e v e n o m e y e r s welcome stephen meyers. Welcome to the studio. Hello, tony. Glad to have you in person. I love it here. Glad you’re here. Um, let’s. Start with the basics with the title. What is this matrix that you want people to crash? Yes. The book is called crashed the fund-raising matric because it reflects what my experience was when i it was in the process of writing the book when i realised all along that i’d been living in these two cultures that were completely unaware of each other. And the matrix, the movie, the matrix is the perfect metaphor for describing these two cultures if you remember in the movie dahna you have to describe it, i didn’t see the movie in the movie, people were taken over by cybernetic implants, robots, machines that rebelled against humanity, and they existed only in ah, like in a computer matrix, and everybody in the matrix was really unaware of it. They just thought that everything was normal, they were living their normal lives, and they didn’t realize that they were kind of being held prisoners, that they were enslaved in a sense and that’s what the movie is about when this one person that called neo the one wakes up to the fact that he’s living in this synthetic artificial environment you are you are our neo am, and i’m standing in for all the fundraisers who are trying to wake up who feel the same sense of something’s just not right in my world is the fundraiser, and that was the experience that i had, andi i wanted to write the book to share that with people so they could wake up, help them to wake up and kind of escape the confines of the silos and the channels that they’ve been stuck in for so many years, okay, sometimes without even realize again. Ok, eso your neo nickname neo-sage steve neo-sage miree all right, rob was deconstructing the titles are working a little backwards. Now, what is the this model? Personalized philanthropy, personalized philanthropy is is the antidote the opposite of what goes on in the matrix? If you think about fund-raising and philanthropy when it translates into the way that we work? It’s really like there’s two cultures there’s an institutional focused culture which is focused almost entirely on trying to make campaign goals and reach objectives within the annual department or the and the major gift department. And the plan giving department and even the small organizations tend to mimic these the’s, silas and channels. So my first experience wasn’t really working, and maybe a two man organization to people and one of us was assigned this one channel and the other one of us was assigned to the other channel. And how ridiculous is that it’s a counter intuitive. So the institutional focus is set off against this personalized focus, where instead of trying to service the campaign you’re trying to serve the interests of donors, you meet the donor where they are instead of where the institution is. So you’re really talking about a whole new definition of what philanthropy is and what fund-raising is for we’ve been talking about donor-centric fund-raising for a dozen years or so, roughly, maybe, maybe more? Sure, i mean, i’ve been in fund-raising from nineteen years, i don’t think we started out that long ago, but donor-centric fund-raising donor-centric has been around for i’d say, at least a dozen years or so, why is how are you nio going toe going to make this different and actually get us to where donor-centric is supposed to have been a cz long as twelve or fifteen years ago? We’ve been talking about donor-centric this and donor-centric that for a really long time, but we really haven’t had much to do about it when some people talk about donor-centric fund-raising they’re talking about recognizing the donor or maybe finding a vehicle that they’re talking about selling a vehicle that they need to sell in order to make to bring that donor in. So really donor-centric fund-raising and that’s really a copyright it’s a trademarked on dh it it really could have to do with how you thank them, how you write to them, how you called cultivate them, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with what fund-raising and philanthropy is about which under my definition, the deafness that i’ve been working with is trying to mesh the compelling needs of interests off a donor with the compelling needs of the organization. So that changes if you start with that definition where the donor’s needs matter that’s the focus is on them. I really refer to this is stoner focus giving rather than donor-centric e-giving because the shift means that you’re focused on trying to understand the compelling interests and the passions of the donor and how they would connect to your organization. All right, that’s. Much different than the institutional focus. I hope personalized philanthropy is going toe is not going to take his long tto be really be realized. As as donor-centric trademark name. Okay, you’re thank you. You’re the evangelist for for personalized philanthropy. I believe i am, i presume. Okay, very good. We got the right person and i mean you. You brought the book all right. There’s let’s, make sure that we just have a minute or so before break, but we got plenty time to talk. We’re in, you know you’re here for the full hour. Let’s make sure that small and midsize shops know that they have this is applicable to them. And they probably have advantages in tryingto pivot too, to be personalized philanthropists philanthropies sent centers or shops, right? Yes. When i wrote the book, i was thinking of the person like me who was working in a small shop who had a background in annual giving and found themselves working in a major e-giving field. So for me, they were always connected. And i think that this is about empowering and enabling a person in a small shop to make a difference with every donor that they work with, not just the ones that there focus on for annual or planned or major e-giving you meet the donor where they are that’s the that’s, the magic of this. Okay, excellent. All right. I want that reassurance. I’m very glad to hear it. And steve and i are going to keep talking about personalized philanthropy. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit. Radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Let’s get some early live listen love but my my voice just cracked like him twelve years old books i don’t want to summerlee live listen love so let’s say hello and send love to san diego, california, oakland, california. We got the north and north and south represented, uh, garfield, new jersey. Cool garfield. I’m not familiar with garfield used have relatives living there. I mean, you haven’t checked in before. Glad you’re with us. St louis, missouri, new bern, north carolina live listener love to each of you. I’ll bet there will be more to come. Let’s go abroad has always checking in the big three in asia, south korea, china and japan. Always listeners from each of those in south korea we got soul and actually have multiple south korea so there’s more than more than one we only see soul anya haserot and in shanghai and shanghai. And also beijing ni hao and yokosuka, japan. Konnichiwa and i learned something else from our intern ho, jon for soul i omitted so let me try this. Tio tio, south korea comes a hum nida all right, i hope i just said something like hello and welcome good my intern, our intern assures me i did. I’m glad live listener love lots of live listen love going out, okay, steve myers, you talk about in the book you mentioned a few times transformation over transaction flush that out from this two ways to think about fund-raising the usual ways to think about the donor period and have a colleague who was written a book about the donor lifestyle cycle pyramid and the pyramid you’re thinking about transactions you’re thinking about where a donor falls as a major donor at the top, in the middle or at the bottom in transformational fund-raising you’re really thinking about time, you’re thinking about loyalty, you’re thinking about relationships, and they can take place over time, and the problem with with the pyramid style the transactional is that each transaction is separate and unrelated to all the others. What personalized philanthropy does is it creates a new model where all the transactions are connected to one another so that each gift can count in a way that would never count ordinarily, and that could explain, i can give you an example. I love examples stories. Just imagine, imagine a rope. What ended the rope is the first gift. And another end of the rope is the last gift. This is the chain of value in plan giving in and fund-raising okay, and if you know all the all the value comes out of the end when the donor dies, implant given it. Well, really. And if you think about the lifetime value of a donor, the big gifts come at the end. Yes. Okay, andi, you’re looking for bumps and major gifts and special gifts gifts you make frequently gifts you make once in a while during a campaign and gives you make once when you die. So what you have is you have a long rope with a lot of knots in it what you’re gonna do and personalize philanthropy is you’re going toe move this rope around and you’re going to connect all of the knots and that’s good means that all of these gifts are going to be connected with what another and they’re going to be united around ah, common purpose that the donor has an objective, a goal that not one gift could achieve, but altogether. They can start to make a big difference during the donor’s lifetime. That’s a radical rethinking of how philanthropy works can we tie the two ends of the rope together and make a circle so that it’s it’s unending and non never breaks a circle? Or you could make a don’t want teo, don’t make a noose you make, you know, make a circle. You’re making really a tapestry like like a persian rug each age a lifetime of giving it has a different design and each donor of weaves their own tapestry of giving as they go through their life. Okay, i won’t force you to take the metaphor any further. We’re going to start making cat beds and that’s not okay, okay, now you you run at the weizmann institute, the center for personalized philanthropy. I’m betting that it wasn’t called the center for personalized philanthropy. When you first got there, you had toe make some changes. I was the national director of plan giving that i was the a national vice president for planning giving. And then ultimately we decided to abandon the title of plan given because sounds very solid and make trixie to me. Well. It what it was we came to realize that playing giving us just a cz much asylum or channel as any of these other poor paint and we weren’t working that way anymore. So we wanted to change that. Actually, what inspired the change from plan giving to personalize philanthropy was when my organization, the weizmann institute, decided to establish a center for personalized medicine. That’s, a collaborative, multi disciplinary interdisciplinary program where people are collaborating in all kinds of new ways. And when i heard that phrase personalized medicine, you mean this medicine is designed for one person only and it’s going to work the first time in their dna. Tnegative with that with their deanna. Why? You know, that just was a wake up call for me. That that’s what philanthropy and fund-raising auto bay. All right, one of the kind of full spectrum, all the building blocks should be available to you. You bring them to where the donor is, rather than trying to sell them something that you have you been instructed. Really? Basically tto bring to them and ask them, would you make a gift of x for this math building, math and science building? And it doesn’t matter if the person cares about mathos sign it, maybe they were in the art department or they were a into literature or poetry. And why would they? Yeah, but we need based on our needs space three organizations needs. But now that you had to do some cultural and organizational change, teo, to create the the the center for personalized philanthropy, what advice do you have for people who want to initiate this in their own organization? How do we start that conversation? I wouldn’t make a lot wouldn’t wait a lot for the organization to change its culture or its policies or procedures. Yeah, personalized philanthropy is something that you could begin to think about when you kind of open up your your mind first realize that there is this matrix of silos and channels that all of our fund-raising basically is in right, and you want to try to find a way to connect your current giving in your future e-giving around where your donors are at, and in order to do that, you need, like like in personalized medicine, they have the technology they have, they’re using technology in new ways they have computational biology so they can look at all this life science information in a systematic way, and this technology allows them to personalize medicine, so we have to have some tools that allow us to do this. So i developed these things that i called killer aps they are gift designs for bringing together current and future gifts that could be personalized and individually tailored to work with each donor-centric get to the killer aps, but we’re we’re we’re spawning neos throughout the throughout the world, and there are in small most of them listeners there’s, a small and midsize non-profits and they want to start a conversation about making a shift to personalize philanthropy from the matrix that they are now burdened with, right? We’re on some tips. How did they start? But they’re going to sound like a lunatic the first time they go to their vice president or their ceo executive director, personalized philanthropy, and they have rope metaphors and not since you know how maybe based on your own experience or you know you’re coaching of others, how do we get this process started in our own currently matrix to shop? Well, as i said, the first thing you have to do is wake up to the fact that you’re working in a silo. Oh, and awareness awareness, and then you need to look outside of yourself outside of your silo. And for instance, if you’re involved in plan giving, you know that one of the things that really makes that correlates with the plan gift is the donor who gives all the time a daughter who gives frequently tends to be the kind of person who wants to remember your organization in their state plans. In fact, they may already have done that, so you would think, wouldn’t it be amazing if we, without changing very much of this donor’s habit or pattern of giving they could have a much greater impact today instead of waiting until their their death, when they’re bequest, comes in so kind of realizing that it’s possible t to have impact and recognition for a donor that begins right now? Okay, we were so we’re going to look teo methods of current recognition and current value for both the organization and the and the donor, right rather than long term. All right, all right. Let’s start and and you have. The killer aps before we get to the killer aps, i think i’d like to just explain the spend rate because the apsara largely dependent on an endowment spend rate and there may very well be organization that don’t even have an endowment yet. So let’s explain, spend re this personalized philanthropy works whether or not you have an endowment or not, right? If you don’t have an endowment, you still need to have cash reserves, and you still need to be able to be financially sound so that’s an objective that every organization has, even if they’re a food bank or the kind of organization where they believe that they should not have an endowment. So there are a good number of them there’s a lot of them out there, actually smaller ones, right? But the basic principle involved here is what i would call something like like this it’s the grail of fund-raising the question that is not asked very often bye donors to the organization is what’s the best gift that i could give you if i could give you anything that you wanted, most organizations would ask for id like a gift of cash and i like it right now, thank you very much. Oh, and they would, and they would like to have it for general purposes, but the question that they don’t know to ask is, can we have a gift that will start working right away? Because we need to pay our bills? We have current needs, and we also want to sustain ourselves for the future. So we need a gift that starts now and grows and scales up for the future, and most people in playing, giving our only focused on the future and most people in major and annual giving our only focus current president, right? So this grail of fund-raising is the gift that it really is the ultimate, the kind of gift that the organization needs the most, but doesn’t even know how to ask for ok and that’s the kind of gift that were talking alright, let’s define spend rate for people, and then we’ll get to your killer aps spend spend rate, please, in an endowment on down when it’s usually thought to be the most important type of gift because a person makes a gift, and instead of being expended immediately, it goes into a bank account, an investment program and each year a certain percentage of that fundez is spent on the the project or the program or the program whatever that might be and usually it’s like five percent. Yeah, i’ve seen between, like, three and a half and five. Yeah, okay, yeah used to used to be hyre when the with economy tanked a few years ago was spending rates began to drop right? Because this is the amount that you’re spending from your endowment and your endowment is supposed to be perpetual. So when investment returns or low spend rate spend rates come down, this is typically decided by the board or maybe a committee of the board each year, and sometimes they look at the role of the average of the past three years, returns and that’s all financial stuff like if you left the idea that yeah, i’m just one of just feeling a little background, so to spend a rate so the spend rate changes from year to year. That’s the point, and typically, you see, same like three and a half to five, usually it’s around around five percent and for the purpose of conversation it’s it’s pretty good. So that if someone makes one hundred thousand dollars gift for an endowed scholarship and the scholarship is a proxy for whatever is something that’s really important to the donor into the school or the organization meshing? Yes. Then that hundred thousand dollars is going to produce, like, five thousand dollars each year we spend each year five thousand five percent of the endowment. Okay, so that’s how that’s, how the spend rate works and the goal of every fundraiser is to go out and get that endowment gift. All right, now we got the basics. Your first killer app is the virtual endowment. What is that? Well, it sounds very jargon. E virtually way. Have george in jail on tony martignetti non-profit radio. Okay, but i know you’re going to get yourself out quickly. I’ll try. I’ll try. Well, you take that. And down with that, you just talked about the hundred thousand dollars that produces five thousand dollars a year. You turned it upside down. This sounds like the veg o matic doesn’t ok. He turned it upside down. It produces the donors is giving you the five thousand dollars a year every every year say for five years or ten years, and that is going to be treated as if it were the product of an endowment that is yet to be created. So this donor has you in their will already safe for one hundred thousand dollars, and they’re pretty comfortable giving you five thousand dollars a year, and they’ve been doing that without even being asked for it. And it was maybe for general purpose, but they’re not comfortable giving you the hundred thousand dollars that’s right during their life, or at least to this point in their life. But their pattern of giving is such that an annual give her already, and they care about the organization. So at the end of the rope to the end of the chain of their living and give it is that hundred thousand dollars? So why just come a bit closer to the mike? Okay, thank you. So who is to say that getting that five thousand dollars every year? No, and then getting one hundred thousand dollars later where the program becomes self sustaining? Who’s to say that that’s not just his valuable a cz getting one hundred thousand dollars up front, right. Ok. That’s a virtual endowment, and then with the donor passes away, the virtual endowment essentially becomes a true and down okay, or if they have a life event that changes their circumstances and they’re able to fund their endowment foully or maybe even half or some, you know, big, big bump while they’re living that’s great, but in the meantime, they’re they’re giving you what you would have spent from the endowment anyway. Brilliant it’s, very simple, not too many organizations do this, though i take it they don’t do that often because they’re focused on having a separate annual campaign, and they’re gonna maintain that base of annual donors and they have a whole maybe, either they have a whole separate division, a department and a department head who focuses on annual giving and a on another department that focuses on major e-giving in another one that focuses on plan giving, and they just they don’t connect up, and they have a lot of issues about who owns the donor and speak to the donor. So and what do you doing? Speaking to the donor there? Not a plan giving prospect, right thinking, right? So if this this donor that you’re describing doesn’t meet the major gift level because here she can’t afford one hundred thousand dollars outright, then they’ll go to the maybe they’ll drop to the or be shifted over to the annual e-giving team or something, but they won’t think of it as a virtual endowment. They’ll just think of it is we get five thousand dollars a year from this person, but they’re not thinking longer term and it’s usually not annual fund silo in the matrix that the preferred gift in the matrix in districts general unrestricted gifts because we know how to spend your money better than you do on. And we needed to keep our operations go. They’re not thinking about devoting it to a purpose that might later be endowed fully that’s, right later in the person’s life or at their death. And if the purpose is central to the organization, if they had that endowment and they could do anything they wanted with it, they would most likely be funding those kind of programmes anyway. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Killer aps o okay, before we get to the killer aps two and three. What? Just make clear why they’re called killer. Aps they’re called killer aps because, like with any kind of technology, when new technology comes on, it just sort of wipes out everything that’s come before it the’s when you employ these aps and you work with them with donors, they achieve gifts that are so much greater. The donor you were talking about, who was the five thousand dollars donor-centric thousand dollars on the books, so that could be, you know, a two hundred thousand dollars done, or even a much larger donor. It just changes the way you think about how you, how you work, you really don’t want to go back to living in that silo. Once you’ve been able to span plan major on annual giving through one of these per highly personalized gifts, they really work amazingly well. Excellent. Okay, we’re going take a little pause, much more. With steve myers coming up, we’re gonna talk about the philanthropic mortgage and step up gift on how your solicitations air going to change more with steve myers coming up first pursuant midyear fund-raising reports and benchmarks air out, you’ve you’ve seen them, you’re getting them in your inbox, but what’s most important to follow what? If you’re not hitting the benchmarks, what if you are? How do you keep it up? Check out the archive of the state of fund-raising midyear checkpoint webinar with ceo trent ryker and senior vice president jennifer bilich they will help you push through your third and fourth quarters those important six months by making sense of all the data they’re dated. Driven, of course, it’s at pursuing dot com you quick resource is then webinars. We’ll be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers. These things are ideal for a millennial night out. People have been talking to alex greer, the ceo, because he reports back to me so ah, i’m glad more people call. Check out the video it’s at we b e spelling dot com see what they’re about music, comedy, dancing, spelling, fund-raising and then talked to alex or you could just pick up the phone. You don’t have to if you don’t want to watch the video, just cut right to the chase. Nine to nine to two four bees. That was not my idea. Now time for tony’s. Take two solitude. Did you get yours this summer? If not, you still can if you did. I applaud you. I admire that. Please do if you haven’t of reprising my high production value video from last summer called solitude. I shot it on location in some location upstate new york, full cast and crew credits solitude, it’s at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s. Take two. Here is steve myers continuing with personalized philanthropy. Steve myers never went anywhere. Took a couple sips of water. Thank you for your indulgence. Let’s. Talk about another killer app. The philanthropic mortgage. What you got going on there? Yeah, i did. The philanthropic mortgage seems so intuitive, but it’s something that we would never be able to think about in highly silent and channeled environment that they call the fund-raising matrix. Yeah, philanthropic mortgage. When you when you buy a house, you don’t have to pay for it in full before you move into it, you’re not. You create a mortgage. This mortgage you are paying, you’re making like one payment and the payment goes partly for interests. And the other part of it goes, who build equity in your in your home bill’s equity principle. Yeah, yeah. Building building princessa build equity, but basically the idea. Here is that your it’s? Just same ideas, thie the virtual endowment a person can make a gift of that spending rate for the for the scholarship that they’d like to have. And so the scholarship khun start up right away and then in the virtual endemic, they’re going to make slight, sort of like a balloon payment at the end of their life. They’re going to pay it off through there bequest. But in the idea of a philanthropic mortgage, you can pay more than just the quote unquote interest. You could also pay a little more than the spending write thie operating annual cost of that on that little bit extra goes to creating and building equity in your endowment fund beautiful so over years, over time, you could build the equity in your fund, and your program can begin right away. So if you’re talking about a scholarship or professorial chair, you get to meet that incumbent, you get to get the letters from them, you get to go and play an active part and have a relationship with the organization of the people that you’re supporting. So going back to our hypothetical before maybe that donor is giving ten thousand dollars a year or seventy, five hundred years, five thousand is the spend rate, and then the surplus goes to start building up that endowment, which will be fully funded at some balloon payment with some balloon payment in future. That’s exactly what all right, there’s a there’s an even more interesting example that relates us up to a donor who’s maybe a little bit older, and they’re going to have to and they have an ira ira now that that thie permanent charitable roll over is in effect, right? We know that it’s going to happen all the time. We want to wait to the end of the year, and guests wait to the last minute so we could make these gifts whenever we want to. So that means if you’re working with the donor who is going to be seventy and a half in the next couple of years, they’re going to start taking money out on a regular basis, right? That required minimum district required to do that and let’s say that they don’t need it toe live that could become part of the, you know, both part of the virtual endowment and it can also be part of the little extra that they might have. So working with a donor who for the first couple of years is just paying the spending right to create a post doctor old chair in computer science because he loves that. But towards the end of the schedule, he’s going to reach the age of seventy, the half he’s going to get a huge for him, at least required minimum distribution of that’s going to be his balloon payment. Right. So he’s going to pay the regular amount. And then the last year he’s going to receive a much larger amount from his ira and he’s going to add that complete his thie endowment that he writes for the post doctoral fellowship in his parent’s names. I’d like to think of the the ira now, especially because the rollover is, well, it’s, actually a qualified charitable distribution. But everybody knows there’s a rollover because that’s, now permanent, we might start to see, you know, ira’s sort of become i got many foundation. You can do your charitable giving through your i r a have a count toward this required minimum distribution, which for a lot of people is more than they want or need, and then you’re not, you know, text on it. You avoid the federal income tax on that, that distribution or that gift teo to the charity so not only doesn’t have a value as a transaction, because each time, as you pointed out, you don’t have to pay a tax on the money that you’re giving away, you’re never taxed on it. Essentially you can use it strategically to grow. You’re on pay, the spending rate and the operating costs for your program so you could begin right away transformational and transaction sorted. It’s okay, we agree, it’s, not a hostile environment didn’t think you’re walking into a house down farm. Okay, um, your your final killer app is a step up gifts, sort of a hybrid talk about talk about to step up and it’s a hybrid that person might be able tio this is one of those gifts that people wouldn’t think about because they would think that i could never have a professorial chair, at least not during my lifetime, because the professorial chair cost of million or two million dollars and that’s going to be more than likely. That i’ll be in my state, but i can’t really find a way to access that money. Now, however, i can i do have that five thousand dollars that i’ve been giving every year for general purposes on dh i could continue to do that for a number of years, so i could start off by funding that scholarship we talked about earlier that hundred thousand dollars scholarship that costs five thousand dollars a year, so during my lifetime with simon older donor, i could have that masters or other scholarship that could begin right now and then upon my death, the funds for my estate, a bequest for my estate could step up that endowment to the million or two million dollar level. So basically my gift would step up from a master scholarship or a doctoral scholarship or a postdoctoral scholarship all the way up to a professorial chair through my estate, okay? And my plan would be put together s so that the totality of my plane would be understood by both myself and by the charity that i’m working with from the very beginning, right? This is a comprehensive that truly is a transformation will get it transforms from an annual gift to a major scholarship gift than to really a very substantial st gift. And they’re all tied together around the same purpose, even though there are separate gifts that function for different purposes along the way. And then, ultimately, they all go for the same purpose. How do the killer aps and the smashing of the matrix and the creation of the personalized philanthropy? How do these all come together to change our solicitations? That’s really a good question. I think it changes the way. First of all, it it changes the way that you think if you go back to the back to the movie the matrix, when people see the matrix, they sort of acquire these magical powers that could kind of see around corners and they can fly, they can defy the laws of physics because they understand the world in a in a way that was different in the way they understood it before. So if you are, if your practice becomes one of personalized philanthropy, you’re kind of working as an enlightened generalised you have all the gifts, all the building blocks of philanthropy that you could bring to bear on each person, wherever they are and that’s going to change the nature of your work. You’re going to be basically sitting on the same side of the table as the donor, really an ally, a force to help them achieve what they want to and realize what’s what’s possible that they never would have thought was possible before by connecting all these small, modest gifts that they could make during their lifetime with larger gifts that they could. Make through their estate essentially changed the whole value change, so the value can come out when they want it to come out and achieve that impact on dh begin to change society now. So that means that instead of just kind of being a hit and run kind of fundraiser like the annual fundez people come in, i’d like to get the same thing i got last year, maybe a little bit more, you know, and then move on to something else. Instead, you’re connected with the stoner through time, you’re not just looking at them at a point on the donor pyramid, you’re looking at their whole lifetime value as a donor and that that changes everything, the changes, the process for developing a personalized gift is much different. I think the solicitation of a typical asking for a regular don’t write your soul stations is going to be more questioning and what’s important to you and what what brings you joy around the work that we do, and right and more of a process than a discreet sit down? And the loser is the one who talks first after the ask is made and then in four. Days there’s a follow up phone call. What are your thoughts about what we pitched, right? Very different. It’s it’s really completely utter lead. So what are some of the things that you ask about in your solicitation meetings? Well, it’s not that i ask any pursuit, different questions than other fundraisers would just when i when i huh we’re thinking is different, i’m listening, i’m listening in a different way. And so what are you doing? Let us into that neo brain. Okay, well, what are you doing? What i’m trying to do is some trying to discover what what matters to them and what i have that other fundraisers don’t have is that i have these killer aps that khun connect to where the donor is, so that if a donor has a habit of giving annually, i couldn’t begin to think about how i might they have a greater impact by connecting all those gifts that they’re doing if they gave for the last ten years, five thousand dollars a year, chances are pretty good that they won’t be offended if we talk about if you continue your pattern of giving, you could have a whole different kind of impact then you then you were having the fair. So it’s it’s a different different tools and technology that i can use. I don’t have to sell them the math building when they’re really more interested in the arts and music programs i can start with where with where they with where they’re at. Okay, so that that makes all the difference. All right, thanks for letting us into that head. We want when i want to be there explicitly, even though we’re there for the hour. But it’s a good head today because you, you know, you’re not just talking about donor-centric donor focused e-giving when you get this information, you can use it so that if a donor is if they may already have included you in their state plans princessa lot of donors they will they will do that without even being asked that’s that’s where they began. So you know that there’s going to be endowment, possible att tthe ENDOFDICTIONARYTRANSCRIBE so that the impact of that future gift can start now we have just about two minutes before break. And in those couple minutes, i want you to flesh out something you talk in. The book about the four children from the passover seder? Yeah, just a couple minutes. How do they figure into this? The four children? Who are they and what? Okay, in there in the passover, in the passover services, this is part of the service that gets recited every year, so people know these names might be familiar with him. So you could well, they think that we were going to passover seders. I’ve only been to one in my life and i don’t remember the four children. So the four children, the seder are the wise, the wicked, the simple and the one who doesn’t know how to ask. So just imagine that these people have grown up and become donors and each one of them in the past, over service. The idea is to try to reach each individual, each type of children of child where they are, and begin with what they are, who they are, and to relate to them as individuals on then you build out, you build out from that. So the four children who begin to think about them a stoner’s, you begin to focus on where they’re at. If they’re wise, they might give it they might be the kind of person who gives every year without being asked if they’re wicked, they might. Now wicket is not it’s, not a bad term in this case, it’s a kind of a positive thing because the person would be discerning very smart, they might have an interest in taking care of their loved ones as well. The donor, who is simple just might begin with a bequest because as the seeds were planted before them, they will continue to plant the seeds for the future. And the donor who doesn’t have know howto ask, is the one who has a charitable inclination but doesn’t know how to scratch that itch so that they’re the most fun to work with the ball. Beautiful that’s, great story. I kind of wish we’d ended with that, but we’re not ending, but we have. We’ll have a good ending anyway. Let’s go out for a break when we come back, stephen, i’m gonna keep talking, talking a little about counting all these new gifts that you’re gonna be getting stay with us. 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If you have big ideas but an average budget, tune into tony martignetti non-profit radio for ideas you can use. I do. I’m dr. Robert penna, author of the non-profit outcomes toolbox. I was just talking to robert planet this morning, as i was saying that’s, a pure coincidence. I did not choose that drop, teo, be put in he’s going to be guest next week. Got more live listen, love rego park, new york. Welcome that’s queens, of course, and augusta, georgia, thea, was that the masters that always in the u s open no usopen rotates the masters in augusta, isn’t it? Live listener love to rego park in augusta, we also give ah, sweden and kazakhstan with us live. Listen, love to you wonderful, thank you for being with us now, affiliate affections. Did you think i forgot the affiliate affections? How could you think that i forgot affiliate affections and podcast pleasantries? Our many affiliate stations am and fm stations throughout the country, wherever we fit into your time block throughout the week, whether it’s a sunday or a tuesday very grateful that you are with us affiliate stations throughout the country, affiliate listeners on those am and fm stations and the podcast pleasantries have to go out to our over ten thousand listeners. Podcast wise, so glad that you were with us. Most ofyou come through itunes, although there’s, others a stitcher and there’s ah podcast site in delaware, delaware it’s d d, which is germany in germany, that we get a lot of listeners from whatever site you’re catching us from. Thank you pleasantries to the over ten thousand podcast listeners. Okay, steve myers, we’re going to have lots of new gifts coming in, and you’re pretty. You’re pretty generous about counting you don’t say very generous don’t say that in the book, but it’s between between the lines you want, you want to give as much credit as possible. Not not surprising. Really. Yes, yes, you do let’s talk about, say, i’m non-cash we break this down, we look at the killer aps and how they would be counted. Or what’s your what’s your counting philosophy generally let’s start there. Okay, the prime directive for me and counting is don’t just count one number. Yes, you said that explicitly. The book? Yeah. Playing everything in our lives. It’s the sort of damage cleese hanging over the head of every fundez razor, its financial resource development. And how much did you raise? You have to? How much did you raise? What did raise? And if you don’t have an answer for that, someone else will. It’ll be on accounting formula financial formula that tells what the present value is of all the gifts that came in. And of course, the president value doesn’t include bequests or request expect expectancies. It doesn’t include dahna the kind of cultivation in the activities that you dio, it reduces everything that comes out of the system that doesn’t not have a present value. Yeah, and as fundraisers know thiss a lot of things that we do that that would be considered us fund-raising achievements that normally don’t count. So we wanna have a way of describing what it is that we do that goes along with how we feel about what fund-raising achievement actually. Is so when i say, don’t count just one number, what we’re really saying is there is one number that you have to be aware of it everybody has to know that, but there’s a complement of that one number and it’s a multi dimensional set of numbers that can help us to measure our own effectiveness and convey to the people that we are working with and for what all this fund-raising has been about and really there are three kinds of gifts that we we like to count outright gifts that count one hundred percent gifts, that there would be like category one gifts like cash and cash equivalents call those the category one cash cash equivalents that would include pledges that are like payable over a couple of years. Legally binding, i get legally binding place it’s legally binding pledges ok and legally binding pledges couldn’t include pledges that air payable over one, two or three years, but also pledges for older donors that are going to be they’re considered is bookable or irrevocable from their estates. That’s another type of ah gift that would count in this cash or cash equivalents. The second category is thie irrevocable gifts that we we raised a charitable remainder trust and gift annuities, and part of the value of them would count in that one number, and the rest of the wood would not count until they were later received. And the third category is revocable gifts or or bequests that are expected, but that have not yet been received and they’re not legally binding and they’re not, and they’re not legally because there are ways of making a bequest legally binding if the person signed a contract to bind their state testamentary contract. Okay, so this, uh, this journey towards personalized philanthropy really began for me with this question of what am i doing here? What? I just asked that question about a half an hour, you’re just asking that’s a really good question that you should always be asking, what am i doing here? And if you’re on task, you’re doing something that relates to one of those kinds of gifts you’re cultivating a donor for a future gift your culture, get cultivating them for a gift that can provide income to them now in a gift to you later, and you’re also cultivating a formal gift that they could make now and that you can have now that could be both cash or khun b assets other other than cash and that’s. How you would evaluate what you’re doing in kind of a multi disciplinary way. How do you like toe, give credit to fundraisers for activities that aren’t quantifiable, you know, advancements in a relationship, but the person didn’t increase. They’re giving this year or pledged to in the future, you know, all those activities that meaningful but non quantifiable, right? You want to. How do we help fundraisers be recognised? Well, you know, we develop metrics out of these out of these out of activities, and you try to figure out the ones that are going to be important for you, and you embrace the ones that are important for you. Now, sometimes, um, people go way overboard on this. There was one fundraiser that i know who travels around a lot to meet with donors, and his super bowl advisor wanted to him to quantify how much. Money per per mile. He was raising. He said, oh, no, no, i won’t do that on. He was senior enough that he was able to avoid that in another system they want to know. What is this fundraiser doing every fifteen minutes? It’s? Almost like a that’s like law firms like a lot of booking for way. I used to book six minute increments. All right, we just have about a minute left. We don’t want to do right. We do it right, that’s what not to do. We have about a minute left. Leave us with some things that we should be measuring to give credit to fundraisers sametz samples of what you measure you like to measure well, when you when you do these blended gifts with blended gifts come from a combination of current and future gifts. So you want to measure the gifts all of their dimensionality so that you could compare them to the single present value along with all the value that they’re going to bring to the organization beginning right now. So if you’re going back to the person that we’re speaking of before, go ahead, you have to wrap it up. Okay, well, their gift just going to have an immediate impact and it’s going to grow and scale up over time and that’s. What you want to try to achieve that’s, the grail of fund-raising and that’s. Why you want to track? Okay, we have to leave it there. Steve myers, vice president at the center for personalized philanthropy at the american committee for the weizmann institute of science. You’ll find him on twitter at stephen meyers eight six three the book get the book it’s personalized philanthropy crashed the fund-raising metrics it’s at amazon and it’s also a charity channel which is the publisher next week master google adwords and master your decision making. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam lee boots is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez and this cool music is by scott stein be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the odd, learned ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful posts here’s aria finger, ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phone. Amador is the founder of idealised took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe, add an email. Address their card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s, why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

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

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My Guest:

Gail Perry: Subtle Steps To The Ask

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

 


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