Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%
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Brian Mittendorf: Numbers In Your Stories
Prof. Brian Mittendorf teaches accounting at Ohio State University. He wants you to rely on financial info to improve your narratives to donors so you raise more money and you’re clearer where it’s being spent. Be assured, I will not permit a dry recitation of the only subject I dropped out of in college. (Does he look like a young Ron Howard, or what?).
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Maria Semple: Research Pre- And Post-Event
Maria Semple is our prospect research contributor and The Prospect Finder. This month we’ll talk about how research can support your cultivation events.
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Duitz 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, but you knew that and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the frustration of a dia de okucani zha if i came to learn that you had missed today’s show numbers in your stories. Professor brian mittendorf teaches accounting at ohio state university. He wants you to rely on financial information to improve your narratives to donors so you raise more money and you’re clearer about where it’s being spent be assured, i will not be parading a dry recitation of the only subject that i dropped out of college and research pre and post event. Maria simple is our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder. This month, we’ll talk about how research can support your cultivation events on tony’s take two between the guests planned giving is fund-raising not fund raiding. We’re sponsored by generosity, siri’s they host multi charity five k runs and walks very grateful for their sponsorship, and i’m very glad to introduce brian mittendorf he’s, a professor of accounting and management information systems at the ohio state university’s fisher college of business before that, he taught accounting at yale, he serves on the editorial boards of the accounting review and journal of management accounting research at ohio state. Brian teaches courses in non-profit and governmental accounting and managerial accounting. His block is counting on charity. You’ll find him on twitter at counting charity. Professor brian mittendorf. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me, tony that’s. A real pleasure. The first question i have to get to get off my chest is your you have all this background in accounting. How in the hell is it that assets? Always equal liabilities, plus owners equity this’s. Why? I dropped out of accounting at carnegie mellon university. It always seemed like just a total fiction makeup. The numbers game. How does it always happen that those two things those two columns on those will teach arts come out equal. That magic now is what does it know, though? So if you actually, you know, i like this stuff. Oh, i will take the question literally. I do mean it, though, if you think about it and that it’s reflecting everything that an organization has, which is a value. Okay, and think. Of the size of the pie and liabilities and owners equity just kind of say who has claims to that pie so here’s all the app here’s, all the assets hears everything that we have that of worse. And then the next question is, who had claims to those things? Liabilities, air claims by third parties and equity or in the case of non-profits net assets are kind of the amount left over that the organization has claimed teo or for business the owner. Oh, so that’s why it always have to be the case? Because any time you have asked that somebody has to have a claim to him and so lie bilich inequity or just split up, who has the claim? I wish i understood that in nineteen, eighty two or so because yeah, okay, but, uh, yes, it’s, everything you have and then somebody has to. Somebody has to have ownership of it. Either you are somebody you owe money to or something like that. I say i never i really didn’t understand that. And i dropped that. I did drop out of accounting and like the second second week, i just i wasn’t getting i could. Make the teach art, but then i could never put the numbers into it, but i could make the cross very easily if you don’t you’re not alone, okay? Not not the i’m actually i’m impressed. You’re you like a challenge and so ah bring on account on to talk for thirty minutes. I’m sure is the challenge, so i appreciate it. Not the most exciting subjects from no, no. Well, we’re going to make it. Well, i don’t know if we could let’s not overstate the case. I don’t know if we could get exciting. Exciting? I don’t know if exciting is possible, but we can at least make it interesting. And maybe have a little fun too. Okay. No, i’m you know, the topic doesn’t scare me. It scared me in nineteen. Eighty two it’s. Why? I dropped out, but i’m out of the course. Not the whole university. Um, all right now i’m you. Ah, you suggested some interesting. Ah, some interesting ideas to talk about. Andi. I like it. So what? What seems to be the problem with the use of numbers by non-profits? Well, it probably really, from my standpoint. Probably treyz backto what? You i kind of already mentioned in that that is ah lot of people have an aversion or to accounting or at least don’t find it interesting. And so it’s, not really at the centre piece of what people are doing, but, you know, if you think of they say accounting is like the language of business or what have you, which i don’t know about that, but if you do view it in the language than the financial statements are book, they’re telling a story and so there’s a whole story out there that some extent people either don’t fully exploit to explain what the organization is doing or don’t fully understand, perhaps. All right, so you would like to see it these numbers more involved in the maura part of the narrative of the storytelling since, since their analogous, the numbers are telling a story, but we also have these narrative stories that we tell about the work that we’re doing and the outcomes we have and the impact that we make in the world. You’d like to see the two of these sync up. Yeah, i mean, i think to the extent that non-profits get in trouble, it’s in circumstances where they have ah, they’re storytelling, and then they have their financial statement, and the things don’t really match up that well. Ah, and it isn’t necessarily ah ah, problem of bad intent, it’s just that the elearning part isn’t kind of melted into the entire entire narrative, and so i think a lot could be done to bring those things together, and that would help donors and potential donors understand better how money is being spent, how their investment is going to be spent definitely cause i think if if donors aren’t given that information, then they’ll probably make assumptions and you get into trouble. When’d donors assume their money’s going toe one thing when they find out that later that it’s going to something else which might have been a perfect, perfect thing to be putting it into. But donor’s assumed it was something else. And so then donorsearch only either don’t trust the organization or find some other organization that they think is going to do something different. Where is that? The organization kind of is more up front about, you know, here’s our priorities here’s where our money goes ah that’s still a lot of trust with donors. How do you go about your research, teo? Determine that these two are not sinking up? Well, so i mean, in many ways, i’ve brought this into the classroom. I teach accounting students primarily and so they’re interested in the accounting rules. But i try teo gonna force them to think about what the financial statements given the rules that we learn about how to do the accounting. What are those financial statements tell us about the non-profits so i actually have my students ah, each semester, choose a non-profit get their financial statements and present on that non-profit say, what is the non-profit commission? And to what extent is the financial statement match up to that mission? Because in a sense, i think most to the extent that financial statements are used, people will look up this overhead ratio or look up, um, some rating agency that’s just going to pull a couple numbers and calculate something and those those tend to not tell the whole story either. Yeah. And what do you ah, what do you and your students typically find as they’re doing these the’s case studies for you? I guess you get a mixed bag and you get you get some organizations that, ah, their finances tell the story that’s very consistent with their mission. And i would say, for the most part, the students think that the organizations don’t take enough advantage of that. They don’t communicate that it clearly as they could, and then there’s other organizations where the students said they’re spending money on things that i didn’t realize they were spending money on, and probably most owners didn’t realize it either. And again, that’s not necessarily a problem. Ah, but the problem being if there could be a disconnect between what donors thinking what’s actually happening? Yeah, yeah, no, i mean, i could see where that that is a problem on because you mentioned donorsearch art assuming things and that’s that’s when you get into trouble and then the media starts assuming things because the disclosures aren’t clear, if if it’s something that gets to the media and then then you gotta really then you got a real problem on your hands. How come you choose non-profits too motivate your students over corporations? Well, that happens to be my particular interests, both in teaching and in a lot. Of my research, i look att non-profits governments to some extent too. But so the course is focused on non-profit and government accounting. Not to say that there’s not there’s tons of interesting things you can get about corporations from their financial statements. But if you think about it for accounting students, you know, they they have ah, a series of eight or nine accounting classes. They will have one that’s on non-profit uh, so much like people in the nonprofit sector. I think that people don’t realize how big the sector is and how important it is to the economy. You kind of get the same thing. Ah, in business education as well. Business students are surprised when they learn how much of the economy non-profit account more yeah, isn’t it? Roughly? Ah, tender. Ten to fifteen percent of our fifteen or sixteen trillion dollars economy. Yeah, i guess. The usual things that here about ten percent, ten or eleven percent unemployment through non-profit, right. And not only employment, but the economic activity also. And asset ownership. Yeah. So there’s a lot of a lot of assets held by non-profits as well. Now may be a lot of that. Is in healthcare sector and education, but there’s still a lot of activity and a lot of employment in the non-profit community. And so especially when i teach mba students, i tried to sneak in non-profits as well, because they don’t coming in don’t they don’t realize how big of the sector is we’re going to take our first break on, brian and i are going to keep talking about this and all these assets that are out there in the nonprofit world who has their claims on them were goingto see how we’re going to we’re going to go back to these t charts, it’s, it’s, very it’s, all it’s, all planned it’s all people don’t think i plan the show, but but i do. This is we’re going to talk about thes t charts and who has claims on all these vast assets around non-profits and whose responsibility is it that these things come out equal and that those true story gets told around your numbers so that’s a lot to cover? I think bryan and i are up to it stay with us. They didn’t think the shooting getting dink dink, dink, dink, you’re listening to the talking alternate network. You waiting to get you thinking? Dahna good. Do you need a business plan that can guide your company’s growth seven and seven will help bring the changes you need. Wear small business consultants and we pay attention to the details. You may miss our coaching and consultant services a guaranteed to lead toe, right groat. For your business, call us at nine one seven eight three three, four eight six zero foreign, no obligation free consultation. Check out our website of ww dot covenant seven dot com oppcoll dahna are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level and keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three the conscious consultant helping conscious people be better business people. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Dahna oppcoll welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent got live listener left to send toe allentown, pennsylvania. Carter at new jersey and new bern, north carolina live listener loved to you also in south korea we’ve got soul and gwang myung on your haserot live listen love to everyone listening live and, of course, podcast pleasantries to the many thousands of you listening at your leisure on the device of your choice. Um okay, brian. What? Ah, what kinds of things specifically do you and and your students? Oh, by the way, where’s where’s, ohio. I thought you’re gonna have lots of students listening to you. Brian, where l come, ohio has not checked in as live listeners. Students are out of class. They’re preparing for graduation now. So that’s very convenient. Okay, you’re going tohave bring lots of live. Listen now, we didn’t know when you were going to doing the show at the time. But out of class preparing it’s only it’s only may second already exams. Yes, exams are done. Graduation is this weekend. My god, what kind of kick schedule you have there? You know, carnegie mellon was never that carnegie mellon. In nineteen eighties was never that easy. Early eighties was not that easy. I don’t know we had a much more rigorous calendar than ohio state. All right, we just switched semesters. I see we have the may mr starting up next week’s a little short, short one month and then summer session starts in june. Ok. All right, i guess i guess you’re it’s an accredited university, isn’t it? Ohio state and share it. Okay, i was just questioning, wondering. All right, um, what kinds of things to you and your students see specifically that non-profits heir not being consistent about between the narrative they’re telling maybe in their annual report, or ah or on their website and the numbers that they’re reporting teo to the irs, things like that? Yes. I mean, i’m there there are some some cases where there’s a clear disconnect. Yeah. So i’m just thinking of it. There’s a one that i was just looking at this week national cancer charity, that if you go to their website, they kind of left here the things we do. And they list all their activities to achieve their mission. And it’s we provide financial assistance to those dealing with cancer, we have activities and support for those deal with cancer, we prevention, public education and kind of the end. Oh, by the way, we also provide international support. And if you go to the financial statements there ah list of programme activities in terms of dollar amounts, the international aid, the distribution of pharmaceuticals is by far the largest amount o and financial assistance on his way down the line. And so you kind of wonder what? Why air they’d listing things in the opposite order on their website than they do in terms of where the money goes. Ah, now, the times those are maybe perhaps more extreme examples where you see a big disconnect. I’d say the much more common thing in terms of a disconnect is we have the narrative on the website, and then we stick in there a little pie chart showing what percentage of our expenses go to programs, and we kind of agreed never to discuss accounting again. Um, and so there, it’s, just you just don’t get in understanding. You could just get this pie chart and people feel obligated to provide the pie chart but don’t want to give much more than that. Okay, well in that in that first case, i’m that makes me worry whether that cancer charity doesn’t want people in the u s to know that so much of their money eyes going abroad. I mean, if they don’t like you said, if they’re not disclosing where it’s going and why, then we’re left to wonder, and i’m wondering, are they are they trying to deceive the us donors so that they don’t know how much is going abroad? Yes, i guess that’s the biggest concern is if you have a circumstance like now i know in this case it’s often this because of these gifts in-kind organisations they’re offered by pharmaceutical companies, we have stuff to donate overseas. Will you help us and gladly help? And so it might be in terms of their the amount of time and energy they put into something it might not be that high in their lives. But in terms of the finances, that is kind of where the money ah is going. So you know what the worst case scenario in this case would be? That the organization is completely aware of where the money is going on, and they don’t want donors to know it. Ah, probably a much more common thing is that the organization itself isn’t quite aware that the money is not going, and they exactly in line with what they believe their priorities to be. And that was just what was there more you’re going to say about that? Well, no, just, you know, the extent of it donors maybe are somewhat averse to paying attention to all the details of accounting. You have the same sort of thing internal or an organization believe this is their priorities and believe this is what they’re spending their time and energy on and it’s just not born out in the financial statements on they just might not be aware of that that, you know, look how much of our money went to this particular activity. Ah, that shouldn’t be as i have a priority of death, maybe we should kind of redirect our resources. There may very well be a disconnect between the office that’s doing the accounting and the office that’s doing the marketing, communications and the fund-raising exactly, yeah, and i think we i mean, we’ve seen examples of this. As well, where another well known cancer charity had actual fundraisers for its organization asking people for funds to help support cancer research, not realizing that the organization itself didn’t support cancer research. It supported patient advocacy. Ah, prevention things like that, and they actually weren’t putting money into research. And again, that’s not that there’s anything wrong with it choosing where to put the money, but the fact that those in the organization didn’t even realize where the money was going that would suggest that there’s a communication breakdown internally. Well, that’s a very serious case. You’re raising money for work that your organization doesn’t do. I would question in that case where’s the where’s, the leadership coordinating between these two functions, the mission and the business and the fund-raising there’s three functions correct. And i guess you know, this is probably the story with accounting in general. Accounting is not going to solve problems and it’s not going to bring donors in, but it can. It can help identify problem. And so if you kind of realize that here’s our communication about what we care about and here’s where the money is going ah, if you pay kind of attention to where the money you’re going in the financial statements, you can learn a lot about the extent to which you’re doing a good job of actually living up to those priorities is the the method of disclosing finances? Is that usually just the annual report? So in terms of communication donors or what they actually file, yeah, no, i’m thinking of communications to donors, right? We could talk about the irs and the sec, but its communication communicated this to donors, you know, that’s not exactly clear, so you get different things. So yet so the annual report might have a page or two on on finances. Ah, some organizations eventually just dump their form nine, ninety out on online and consider that their effort it transparency. Some will get audited financial statements, which provides some extra credence to the financial statements. But still, i think just sticking your audited financial statements is kind of the bare minimum that kind of say they’re available, but we won’t bother to interpret them for you. Is that what the ah, the annual report often does, doesn’t it doesn’t it talk through the the financials or no, not always? Ideally, ideally, that would that would be great is if it talked kind of about program accomplishments and in that context to say, oh, by the way, one of our accomplishments is we’ve achieved this much say, if you’re interested in research, we’ve given this many grant and this is how much money we’ve given to those grants, and this is what percentage of our budget those amounts represent. Probably the more common scenario is you get a lot of ah, a discussion about program, accomplishment, and then kind of at the back, two pages of the annual report, you get the financial, uh, the extent to which that those can be brought into the discussion. Ah, it helps avoid this issue of eye if there’s one thing that people in the nonprofit sector seem to agree on it’s, that they don’t like that people fixate on this overhead ratio. Ah, and wait, overcome that is to say, if that’s not what matters let’s communicate the financial information that does matter-ness we did a show a few months ago october on the overhead myth letter that was signed by the the three charity watchdog agencies charitynavigator, guidestar and the better business bureau wise giving alliance. I had those three ceo’s on talking about the background behind the overhead myth letter. What? And what led up to it and why they all agreed that it something like that needed to be signed so you could listeners could go back, teo last october on dh find that show um, brian, you have unexamined or two of charities that you think are doing well with the coordination between numbers and narratives? Sure, i mean, so i mostly look at larger, larger organizations, but there will be more well known anyway. So the one that comes to mind that i’m constantly impressed with the michael j fox foundation, which focuses on parkinson’s research if you kind of go to any other communications, their website or their annual report, they make a big point of their mission is to go out of business, you know, they were working to go out of business, they’re going fund research to get rid of parkinson’s and their financial statements bear that out, but more than that, they include them in a lot of their discussions, so they demonstrate we’re trying to go out of business and you can see it, because if you look at our financial statements, we don’t have extra reserves. We spend everything we can because we’re in a hurry and most of our program funds go towards funding research grants and here’s, how many research grants we’ve given and here’s how much that was and here’s, what percentage of our budget you know, it’s very a big part of their communications is to say, we are in this is urgent, and you can see it by the way we act. Yeah, so the numbers and the narrative are in sync and rely on each other. Exactly, and you don’t have to be an organization that in aa in a hurry to make that sort of that sort of story work, you can always say were in order innovation. It wants to have an impact for a long time, and as a result, we need permanent endowment fund and here’s how much success we’ve had in raising those and here’s why we need more, but the extent to which that those that narrative is tied to the financials, i think it helps avoid this issue of people making assumptions about the financials. It could also be helpful in a campaign. I mean, if you if you do, you want to last in perpetuity and you have a small endowment that’s not going to support that, for instance, or if you’re very low in cash and you need to have maybe ah non-cash campaign you know it was a short burst or something. I mean, you, khun, rely on your number, your your accounting to ah, to bear out the need for some type of a campaign. Oh, i agree completely. Yeah, i mean, to the extent that people use accounting in in their communications, that tends to be here’s what we do with the money, but perhaps just as important is to communicate here is how much we need ah, here’s, the extent of our needs and that can be pretty powerful. You could even go so far as to perhaps compare you’re balance sheet in the areas that you’re trying to raise money for let’s say, i’m still think of ah fund-raising campaign with the balance sheets of some comparable organizations and see how, you know we’re coming up short. Yeah, because i think to the extent that donors have a field organization, it’s, that they’re they’re mohr aware of more visible organizations, so they assumed that those organizations are larger and have more reserves, and that might not be the case. You can essentially say, hey, here’s, our reserves are out like he said, relative to appear organizations um, you might expect us to have a lot more than we d’oh. Yeah, you can on. And you can have a very visible organization in the social networks and not be a very big organization at all. Exactly. Yeah. Um, is there another one that that you like a lot somebody doing well, i’d like to have some encouraging stories. Sure. Yeah. I mean, i think in terms of in terms of a big turnaround, i would say live strong or what used to be the lance armstrong foundation. Ah, there. You know, may maybe they had before. They had so much money coming in. They had the luxury of not kneading really in depth communications about finances. But, you know, they very recently in most recent and past twelve months, i would say, have in their communications, emphasized muchmore kind of the breakdown of the programme costs. How much? Not just here’s. The percentage that goes to a program. But here’s, what we fund, we planned this advocacy. We fund this particular program for counseling, etcetera. So there are a lot more detailed in their communications with donors. And they do a lot more to discuss their financial needs. Have you noticed? They’ve been out in the open, essentially saying we’ve been hit hard by the lance armstrong controversy and here’s how much it affected us and here’s, how much we need to continue doing our job. So they’ve been way more up front about their finances on recent, yeah, they’ve come around, so you didn’t see them being as open in the past. When that we were. I’m doing very, very well, financially. I guess not. I mean, a part of my day has just been that they need wasn’t there, but they did. I have a lot of funds coming in, and there was a lot of misunderstanding about where the funds were going, and i think they’ve taken a concerted effort to fix that. We just have about a minute and a half or so before we have to wrap up, where do you think the responsibility lies in the non-profit for for creating this coordination that we’re talking about? Ah, that’s. A good question. You know, i think. The leadership of a nonprofit organization can do a lot to bring to emphasize that accounting matters where the money goes is a big part of what we do because, you know, i might be repeating myself, but if an organization isn’t kind of proactive in this sense, then you kind of left with donors making some assumptions, or you’re left with watchtower organization or, like you said, reporters or something digging in and finding something that they might think doesn’t match an organization’s financial. So to the extent that an organization can manage, the narrative can say, here’s, where our money goes and here’s, why? Ah, then all the better and now i don’t think accountants are aren’t goingto take the lead on this their their goal really is to generate the information and make it as unbiased as possible. But the extent that leaders in the organization can, you know, emphasize accounting is being a part of the narrative, i think that’s kind of where we’re alive, all right, we have to leave it there. Brian mittendorf is a professor of accounting and management information systems at ohio state university. You’ll find his blogged at counting on charity. And you’ll find him on twitter at counting charity. Brian, thank you very, very much, thank you just only doing it. Thank you, real pleasure. Likewise, storytelling and financial transparency and its coordination between the numbers and the narrative obviously critical to fund-raising something else that could be critical to your fund-raising or part of your fund-raising plan might be a five k run or walk, and our sponsor generosity siri’s does just that they run multi charity peer-to-peer runs and walks, they do this the back end work this a ll that all that behind the scenes stuff like lesson licenses and permits and making sure that you have enough portable restrooms and you have a fluid stations on the course, and there are shirts and race bibs and there’s a proper timing mechanism so everybody knows their their time as they come across, they take care of the web pages for your organization and for all the participants so that they could do the fund-raising and they also have a charity support team which will help you with the team building and the fund-raising around the event and you will find generosity siri’s at generosity siri’s dot com or you could just pick up the phone that’s the way i like to do business, you can speak to dave lynn he’s, the ceo, and there were seven, one, eight five o six, nine, triple seven they have events coming up in new jersey, florida, atlanta, toronto, new york city, philadelphia, so i hope you will check out generosity siri’s i’m very grateful that they are sponsoring the show my block this week has that planned giving is not fund-raising but it’s fund-raising that’s the video on my site this week, i often hear organizations say that they can’t do plant e-giving because they don’t want to hurt the other, i plan to give the other fund-raising programs that they have, in effect, that they’re they’re running their annual fund, they’ve got their major gift program, those are typically the ones that that people think of and they don’t want planned e-giving to hurt those other other methods of raising money and it’s actually one hundred degrees from that planned e-giving creates much stronger donorsearch ships and enhances other types of giving, especially you see that in annual giving. Think of who we put in our wills you have your husband, wife, children, grandchildren and when someone puts in your organization alongside those dear loved ones, they think pretty darn highly of you and the charitable work that you’re doing, and they’re not going to reduce their e-giving in other methods to the contrary, what i see is enhancements and growth in annual e-giving from people who make the plan e-giving commitment so that’s it there’s a video on my blog’s says little bit more about that. That plant e-giving is not fund-raising and that is that tony martignetti dot com and that’s tony’s take two for friday, second of may, the eighteenth show of this year. Maria semple is with us she’s, the prospect finder she’s, a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her website is the prospect finder dot com and her book is panning for gold. Find your best donor prospects now she’s our doi end of dirt cheap and free ideas. You can follow maria on twitter at maria simple. Hello marie. Welcome back. Hi, tony. How are you? I’m doing very well. How are you? Just fine today. Terrific. We have two follow-up something from last time you were on. We talked about you. Mentioned actually something that the postal service runs called called every donordigital and we promised we promised that we would fill that out a little bit. Yeah, actually it’s called every door direct the reed or organ hoexter and in there, george, very different donor endure, but, yeah, i think we were talking about it at the very end of our last call together, when we were discussing census data and delving deeper into zip codes and finding affluent zip codes and so forth. And you asked, well, what would you do with the information? And i said, well, one possible thing you might do is get involved in this program that the u s postal service has called every door direct. I think it’s also goes by neighbor male andi it’s, a very interesting program, because within a zip code, tony, you can actually break down some household income data by route. Um, so if you were interested, for example, in within even a specific zip code in trying to create some sort of a postcard that would go to every household that had the highest affluence in terms of household income, even within that one specific zip code. You can break it down even that much further, and so i thought it was a pretty interesting programme and perhaps worthy of a mention. Each piece to mail out is seventeen point five cents that’s cheap, that’s cheap, yeah, and also they should, though i i’ll just press that, though, by saying that they should have a nen depth discussion first with their printer or their printers air very much tied in a lot of printers are tied in with this program, so they should either discuss with the printer or with the postal service to see what would be cheaper to go with they’re non-profit rate, they’re indicia, or is it cheaper to go with this program? But anyway, i thought it was pretty interesting because of the fact that you can really delve down by household income and really just get it to those households only yeah, and the other thing that the postal service promises is that you you you don’t have to know the addresses within the within the zip code that you’re targeting. You just specify the zip code and this other data that you’ve mentioned and they will they will guarantee that it gets delivered to all the addresses in that zip code that meet your meat, your criteria without you knowing what those addresses and names are exactly ugly and that’s a big stumbling block for a lot of non-profits is, they have a sense of where the pockets of wealth might be, but they don’t know, you know, short of driving up and down those stairs leading flows in those mailboxes, they don’t really know exactly how to do that. So this is very, you know, very geographically focused on dh it could be something to explore the printer that i was having a discussion with about this is based in new jersey there called chatham print and design, and i was asking them some specifics around this, and they were the ones that kind of enlightened me to the fact that in some cases, depending on how many zip codes they wanted to hit and so forth, it might be cheaper to use their non-profit indicia instead. So you know something to think about something teo delve into, and i’ll make sure i provide the postal service web site where people can get started on exploring further provided on your facebook page, good woman all post two takeaways later today, and the program again is called every door direct the postal service. So we want teo talk also today about research for events ah, pre and post your cultivation events that’s, right? So, you know, very often, non-profits will hold smaller cultivation events either in somebody’s home or in their facility on there really geared more toward major donors, right? Or your plan e-giving donors, for example, and so i thought it would be interesting to talk about what are some of this steps he could do from a research point of view before the event to prepare adequately. So you know who to target and what to talk about? And then after the event, what additional research do you think you should do after the event? Ok, so i guess pre event we’re starting with who were going to invite exactly so with the board, if i would think that you’d want to start it, they’re typically it is a boardmember or someone close to a boardmember who might be hosting an event at their home. And so you would try and ask your your boards to provide the names of maybe five to ten people that they think that they can invite to this event and of course, ideally thes people should have from financial means to contribute. Ah, larger gift to the organization. Um, and, you know, the board then might also need some i guess you would call it education around why we’re even hope holding this event. No, now you’re suggesting these be people who can make a larger gift because we’re envisioning a pretty small event, right? This is not a major event with hundreds of people where you’re you’re, you’re prepping us for something smaller and a little more intimate. Yeah, you know, depending on the size of the home, i would say somewhere around twenty, twenty five people might be a nice, comfortable number. That’s why? I said, you know, if you’ve got the board and, you know, coming up with the name of, say, five to ten people each by the time the invitations go out and you get the actual level of, you know, yes, responses to attending you might really end up with a good, solid twenty or twenty five people coming to the event and the advice on how many people you need to invite to get twenty or twenty five? Well, you know, you could have attrition rates anywhere from you, no one third to a half in terms of, you know, getting the invites out and then even right up to the day of the event, you could end up having cancellations because of things that just come up in people’s lives that’s why i always suggest kind of over invite on and, you know, we’ll make it work, okay? And then once we know who these people are, what are we still doing pre event tio to make it clear where board members and thie ceo and other sea level people should be who they should be spending their time talking to so there’s probably some sites that we’ve covered in the past, but i think the top websites, for example, that they might want to go to. Of course, you want to start with google, google that person’s name. We’ve talked about this before in terms of putting quotation marks around the person’s name so that you’re you’re getting that name or if there’s a middle name or initial, you might include that in their if the spouses coming along google’s spouse’s name is well on dh find out where they’re connected to other nonprofit organizations. Eso sometimes you might have some prominent people on the list, and you already know perhaps where they’re employed, but you don’t really know that much about where they’re spending their volunteer time and their donors so you can break google down even further by having them target just the sites that have a dot or gora dot edu in the search results. Okay, so that’ll that’ll give you something some good information there also another great sight that i think would be good to delve into is the federal election commission website. We talked about that one? Yeah, try and figure out where else they are. They’re donating. I was on a webinar a couple of weeks ago that actually talked about the high correlation between ah, political donation dollars, and then how that could translate to the non-profit sector? Um and that was ah, webinar that i had attended just a few weeks ago, and i thought that was very interesting because they actually played place quite a bit of emphasis on finding people who are contributing high levels of election dollars there, i thought, well, this is something that non-profits should perhaps take a look at when they’re thinking about who’s going to be attending their cultivation events. We’ve done a show on political fund-raising too, i’m pretty sure i think we devoted a show to it. I know it wasn’t part of a conversation, i think we devoted something to it. Political fund-raising how about your own your own database to you’d like to know if the person made a gift recently so that if you see them at the event, you can thank them very much for that gift that just came in recently or if there’s some other information in your in your c, r, m or fund-raising database you so you should be looking there, too, i think. Oh, absolutely so, you know, first off, hopefully you do have a good c r m keeping track of some of this great donordigital but yeah, knowing a little bit about how much they’ve given when their last gift. Wass um and then also knowing, you know, safe your your organization has various areas of programming let’s say you’re a why, for example and you might have programs for the very young and and and older populations you might want, teo figure out, did they even designate that their donation had gone toward, say, youth programming so that when you’re having that conversation and thanking them for their past support, you can allude to their past support specifically toward x y z program so that that would really, i think, go a long way, so that donor knows that, you know, you’ve taken the time to understand where my passions like, okay? And there are lots of sites that people can go to, and we’ve talked about scores of them through the through the shows we’ve done together, so once you’ve once you’ve done the research now, you need to share it so people know who, what this what this background applies to and who to be talking to about it exactly. That’s absolutely right. Okay, so you share it with the sea level people who are going to be there and a cz you suggested, hopefully they’re boardmember is there? Andi, you know what? You know, they have little conversation starters type especially if i think if it relates to the to the organization to the person’s relationship with the organization like a recent gift or something, or when where the giving has been the way you suggested, right, and keep in mind. Part of the reason why you also have the cultivation event is to get some new people in the door that haven’t made a donation to your organization before, right? So these are people that this could very well be their very first touchpoint with the organization. So you want to make sure that you are broadening your your talk during that cultivation event to enable people to understand what you know that a brief history of the organization in terms of you know who you’re serving now you’re some of your success stories and where the organization is looking to be poised to go in the future. We have to go away for a couple minutes, maria and i will keep talking about you’re a cultivation vents will move to post event, and i got lots of live listener love, stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Dahna have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness. Dot, come, we look forward to serving you. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. 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 live listener love let’s start in the uk bury st edmunds welcome i love it’s it’s berry bur why st edmund’s is he is st edmund’s buried there? Or is that something aspirational? St edmunds is alive and you’d like to bury him. I’m very interested that’s a that’s a cool name bury st edmunds you uk welcome live listen love to you musashino japan! I kind of feel like i said that with an italian accent musashino! But so if i’ve mispronounced that i apologized, but you’re musashino. I’m not sure in any case you are ponyo korea has joined us on your haserot we had others from korea before beijing ni hao always listeners from beijing, and we have listeners in italy, mongiardino and murata, and i’m going to be in italy and not too far from either of those cities. I see they’re there in the north of italy, i’m going to be it at a resort in lago de guarda speaking at the festival del fund-raising i love that name festival del fund-raising the week of may twelve maybe you’re going to be there. It’s right on the lake it’s, a resort on the southern tip of lago de guarda live listeners love to everyone who is with us, us and maria simple you’re with us from new jersey, you’re still there, right? Yes, i am. But i wish i were going on that trip. It sounds fabulous, just fabulous. Yeah, i’m i’m leaving on the the twelfth of ah living on the eleventh of may mother’s day yeah it’s going teo and your festival del fund-raising bonem biaggio grayce that’s as far as i can go. So that’s not talking more italian, i’ll embarrass myself. Um, except for the except for the city in japan, i’m very good at pronouncing that in italian and, you know, i apologize to musashino. All right? We’re after are cultivation event now and, uh what what ideas have you got for us? Well, i think that right after the event happens, i’d say within twenty four to forty eight hours, ideally twenty four hours the team that put together the event staff board volunteers should really have a conference call that that should be scheduled as part of your overall event planning. Build that right in and understand that you know, the people who were involved and attended who are part of the organization should be on that costs you could really debrief, um, people attending the event will hopefully understand that they’ve gotta have their listening ears on at the event because post event, they’re going to be asked to put those same listening ears on and be asked follow-up individually with some of these people that have attended the event, these events, the key is really in that follow-up tony, as you well know, listening ears, but that’s interesting for, like, bunny ears. Yeah, you do want to listen to the person’s feedback about about the evening? Yeah. What did you think? What was there anything that you liked about our programming? Is there anything that concerns you mean, this is an opportunity for people to perhaps, you know, air cem concerns, you know, your previous guests just talking about the financials and so forth. Maybe if you’re talking to somebody who is really into financials and numbers, they might start asking some very specific questions on that follow-up call about how the organisation is run fiscally on dh if you don’t have the answers so at your fingertips that’s okay, it’s okay to say that, but just indicate that you will certainly get that information right out to them. It feels like when i put my listening years on, then i would be wearing my father’s old shirt as a paint smoke, and i’d be laying down for a nap. I dont know just something about think about listening years makes me sound, but but it’s not juvenile, it just that’s the way i’m thinking. Well, no, i mean, because there’s, there’s, there’s a difference between hearing what somebody says and truly listening to what somebody says, pardon me, i’m sorry, but i was busy. I was busy doing something else, never hearing, of course, that’s a stupid joke. Yeah, no, you’re absolutely, yes listening, listening skills. And this is a perfect time to be listening because you do want to know what resonated with the person you’re trying to cultivate them to bring it to the organization. You want to know what resonated and and what didn’t. Yeah, and in terms of prospect researcher donorsearch research, this is precisely the type of information that you’re going to get on that on that follow-up phone call with the attendees that you’re simply not going to find. For the most part, online, you’re going to be hearing information about how they feel about your organization. You’re not going to find that anywhere online is a prospect, a researcher, right? I mean, there’s not going to be some, you know, hopefully there’s not gonna be some block post about your organization and really, really feel about it. It’s usually they should have any negative feelings, god forbid. But, you know, you want to be able to bring that information, then back to your organization and say, you know, g, you know, i just had a great follow-up phone call with this attendee and, you know, he really liked what he heard about what we were going out i had going on with our youth program and is much, much more interested in having additional conversations with us around that that information must get into your donordigital base that becomes part of what you’ve done, your prospect research on, right? Yes. And and now we know we have this motivated donor, and by the way, you’re point is very well taken that the best some of the best prospect research may be the best comes directly from the person’s. Lips, we’re not going to find it anywhere else where? S so now we know we’ve got this cadre of people who we’re moved by the event and, you know, we know who wasn’t moved, so we know not to spend more time with them. That’s also valuable information, but for the ones you well, yeah, for the ones who were moved, where do we how do we take our research to the next level now? Well, you might then start looking through if you have access teo wealth screening services, make sure that you put their name through that service and you could even do that pre event if if you’d like on dh certainly sites like link in to determine, you know, a little bit more about their background in terms of their professional background, if they’re on lincoln. Um and, you know, a host of other websites that you and i have talked about in the past, but you’re really trying to determine you know what the best approach is going to be to this individual, what their level of wealth is and where else they’ve given before so any and all resources that you have access to in terms of doing that, reese search that are in the public domain, you’ll want to get access to that also. There’s. You know, we talked about tony, that research that you can’t really find online. You know, you might have somebody who’s very interested in the organization. But it could be a timing issue. This if you find out that they’ve got several children in college, for example, maybe a boardmember happens to know that it’s really important to know. In addition to all that the what about the person you need to figure out who in the organization? I should say, who in the organization is going to continue the cultivation, maybe it’s the person who invited them? But maybe that person isn’t comfortable and maybe someone else in the organisation is more appropriate, yeah, that’s, that’s absolutely right. I’ve had i’ve helped put together some cultivation events where people have said, you know, i’m very comfortable inviting these people, but i’m not going to be comfortable in the follow-up and the ask certainly not the ask they might be okay to stay involved in the cultivation bays. Some people just really don’t want to be the one to make the ask and if that’s the case, you certainly as the non-profit executive, you don’t want them to be the one to be make the ask because thie ask is likely either to get botched or not happen at all. Yeah, and plus, you just have ah volunteermatch boardmember or not who’s uncomfortable. You’re asking them to do something that they said they’re not comfortable doing that’s that’s a bad practice, right? Exactly. All right, so you find the right person, you developed a strategy, and hopefully then you ends in a solicitation that that’s that’s what it’s all about right that’s? Why we start the whole process with identifying and researching, and ultimately it really does need to end up with an ask somewhere along the line. Otherwise, all of that work to put together the cultivation event will have been for naught. I couldn’t agree more marie simple she’s the prospect finder you’ll find her at the prospect finder dot com, and on twitter, you’ll find her at maria simple. Thank you very much. As always, maria, you’re very welcome my pleasure to have you again next week. Author and professor doug white returns for the hour we’ll talk about his new book abusing donor intent the story of the epic lawsuit from two thousand one, when the family of a thirty five million dollar donorsearch dude, princeton university very grateful again for our sponsor generosity siri’s you’ll find them at generosity siri’s dot com our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer shows social media is by julia campbell of jake campbell, social marketing and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. Our music is by scott stein. You with me next week for non-profit radio. I hope you will be big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. They didn’t think the shooting getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking alternative network waiting to get in. Nothing. You could oppcoll. 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Your ears will be delighted with the sound of music and our voices. Join austin and sloan live thursdays at eleven a. M on talking alternative dot com, you’re listening to talking alt-right network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you, too? He’ll call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight, three that’s two one two, seven to one eight, one eight, three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Zoho bonem hyre
