How to not Fall Victim to Fundraising’s “Shiny Object Syndrome”

0:04 welcome everyone to Visionality's building forward webinar series where
0:09 your friends Kristiana Almeida and Emily Barany knock down non-profit norms
0:15 and burn it down and rebuild it better that's good
0:21 today's topic is going to be ... shiny object syndrome and aka no you can't
0:26 have text to give until you do all these other things first the reason we wanted to do this ... today

Why this topic

0:31 was because we actually ... as we were receiving feedback of like hey what other topics would you like to do
0:37 one of the top one of the pieces of feedback that we actually got back was like hey what are some creative fundraising ideas i'm gonna wave to my
0:44 neighbor ... what are some creative fundraising ideas and we're like that's a really good topic for us to not do
0:51 um from the standpoint of like what are kind of the trends as it pertains to shiny object fundraising syndrome but
0:57 also like what are the things that you as an organization need to have in place prior to even considering these it's not
1:03 to say that they're all bad some of them are bad but it's not to say that they're all bad but it's also not to say that
1:09 all organizations are in a position to add these to their fundraising matrix to start with
1:14 so ... we need to start our timers mine is now going
1:21 great okay so with that let's go ahead and you know hop in and why are we doing
1:28 this so this topic we just gave a little bit of background but really the kind of like core of this is that people not
1:34 people organizations sometimes get into panic mode when they're starting to see like
1:39 donor year over year retention start to go down a little bit or maybe their end of your like letter isn't performing as
1:45 well as it used to they start to panic a little and they're like okay so we need to just come up with something new like
1:51 how do we get new donors and knew this and knew that redo all of it ... and so they start to kind of look for
1:57 these get rich quick schemes and get rich quick schemes are very you know common to just kind of like the american
2:03 psyche in general right it's like how do we work less to get more it's not a bad concept in theory but when it comes to
2:09 like stretching your fundraising stuff but also stretching your resources then
2:15 it actually can be an issue and i'm going to have you comment on this while i mute because the street sweeper is going by what a treat well and you know

Nail your basics

2:23 zero organizations that we've interacted with are like you know our development team really has a lot of
2:29 bandwidth you know they just got time on their hands so like let's give them you know they need things to do like zero
2:36 organizations have extra bandwidth especially in their development team and and so and and i know it can be i
2:44 mean we've all seen these like incredibly performing ... campaigns but
2:49 what's and so i know that our staff and our board and our supporters or something are sometimes like oh try this
2:54 this this it worked for this one organization one time like across the country and so
3:00 yes there are those like anomalies but so often but they don't they don't work
3:06 like 90 90 99 of the time they don't work and so our big push is
3:13 nail your basics and don't try anything sparkle shiny creative until you nail
3:18 your basics until you have great donor retention until you're getting you know
3:24 your thank yous out right away and we'll go through the list of like what those non-negotiable things are that you have
3:29 to nail until you get to do text to give ... but you know it's so much more costly
3:35 to get a new donor than it is to retain an existing donor or work with that donor to create a pledge to put you in
3:44 their ... planned giving so in their will or in their trust or to increase their annual donations so that's really what
3:50 we're going to focus on instead of what's the new shiny thing what's the new get rich quick scheme
3:57 so the first one possibly my favorite one
4:02 yes possibly my favorite one
4:08 is katy perry if we can just talk to katy perry
4:13 Kristiana if we could just talk to her i know that she will move to santa barbara and i hear she and
4:20 prince harry are loaded they're so loaded and they're friends with oprah because we've totally wanted to go after
4:26 oprah too so if we can just get these people to just give us a million dollars it's
4:32 fine just one we just need one million dollar gift and it's gonna be katy perry
4:38 i know it and the funny part is like we actually have seen a lot of organizations have
4:43 this conversation as if accessing these people is just super easy
4:49 and and as if they don't know that they have lots of money that they can give away like it's never occurred to them to
4:55 like know about the organizations within their own passion ... delta and within
5:02 like their community like they live under a rock and have no idea that they have
5:08 money and that there are non-profits who would like that money so um
5:14 you're not gonna get a gift from katy perry you're like you're not don't don't bother trying
5:21 it's not gonna happen sorry, I... I... I know all of you on this call and i love all
5:26 of your missions you all deserve her money you're not gonna get it

Board vs staff approach

5:32 yeah and i think that the important part here is that we actually this is this happens very commonly ... and this is not
5:39 to to bash board members like paula because it's not ... but we do often hear this from a board down versus a staff up
5:46 approach like these these conversations do tend to come up within board meetings like as they're looking at budgets um
5:52 and i think it's really just like this opportunity to kind of look at who is already in your donor database that you
5:58 have a relationship with who can you bump up to a higher giving level who haven't you reached out to like who
6:04 hasn't seen a tour of like your facility or your mission in action those are really powerful opportunities to get
6:10 existing donors ... more engaged with the mission and to get them to increase their giving over
6:17 time as well so yes even though like we love the katy perry royalty oprah approach ... it's
6:23 actually it has never worked out in anyone's favor and if anything ... a cautionary tale with that is that if you
6:30 do end up getting oprah to get to go to your event or if you do end up getting oprah to give you money there's actually
6:36 a strong chance that's going to backfire because then people are going to view your organizations not needing their support anymore like oh well you have
6:42 oprah as a sponsor like you don't need ... you don't need my gift anymore because you have oprah and we actually
6:48 have seen that happen with organizations who did try to go after and actually nail a large name like this so
6:55 cautionary tale getting a big getting a big name actually is not necessarily going to help your organization because
7:01 it actually may deter people because they're going to view your organization as fiscally just fine if you've got an
7:07 oprah in your back pocket so and we've seen that even like not with a famous person gift but with a very large legacy
7:15 gif you know there are a couple organizations locally who have gotten incredible legacy gifts but a lot of
7:21 times those got those have strings attached or they're restricted and so yes you may have a ginormous pot of
7:27 money right here but it's very likely actually that you don't have access to that for general operating or you know
7:34 it may have you know restrictions could have been put in place that it needs to go into
7:40 like the foundation and you can only pull off the interest so we it sounds really obviously like who
7:46 wouldn't want a multi-million dollar gift but a lot of times like it's not just like a panacea and it ends all your
7:52 problems exactly okay let's go on to the next one next one is going to be text to give
7:59 tech oh text to give i do love text to give text to give is a great thing
8:06 when you're ready for it ... most organizations haven't nailed the basics yet so they're not ready for text
8:13 to give number one number two the good text to give ... programs are expensive
8:18 so like on a text to give program you don't wanna cheap out and ... so like some of the
8:24 less expensive ones for example you text a number which just sends you to a
8:30 website where you have to fill out your credit card information on your phone and that sucks so um
8:36 when you're ready for text to give i do love it ... and i'd like to hear your opinions on it i personally love it
8:42 however you have to spend the money you can't you can't cheap out on one of the like less um
8:49 integrated programs no i definitely agree with that and of course like i'm coming to text to give

Traditional vs Text2Give

8:55 from the standpoint that i used to work for the national american red cross and we had the like the america the national
9:01 american red cross was the original like two market for text to give
9:06 um and so like we've seen the power of text to give ... but also like if you
9:11 have the traditional text to give where the phone company or like your carrier company is what's giving you the the
9:17 gift afterwards they actually take a very high percentage very high
9:22 um so you're getting like so you need to be at a point where you can where a high
9:28 volume is good or you have the ability for a super high volume because the overhead on it is really like hindering
9:36 like hindering in so many in so many ways so i actually do prefer if i was to do a text to give for smaller to
9:42 medium-sized organizations i actually do prefer the text with the link to the giving
9:48 so long as your giving page is mobile friendly just because the overhead on it is going to be a lot lower got it
9:55 and also you actually get to maintain the donor information if they're going to your website too you do not get any
10:01 donor information from that traditional style text to give and that's a really important thing to know ... because i
10:11 i'm a data nerd and so i always believe having the information of who that donor is is going to be far more valuable than
10:17 the 10 to 15 donation also recognize that text to give tends to be very low
10:22 dollar amounts and so if you do not have a high volume opportunity you're gonna have low volume low dollar amounts
10:29 because those tend to be like in the 20 range type gifts versus like online gifts tend to be in that hundred and
10:34 twenty dollar range so just look at that difference there so of sending somebody to your website versus
10:41 asking them to text whatever number or text whatever word to whatever number
10:46 um i would also so like it also seems really most
10:52 appropriate for like an impulse gift so like obviously you know disaster
10:57 response and recovery is the exact example of an impulse gift and
11:03 so you're not going to build your monthly giving you know 100 a month pipeline through
11:10 text to give it it can be really great for those like impulse you know impulse moments but it's not
11:16 going to be your ongoing you know sustainable like keep the train on the tracks fundraising

Can Text2Give be useful

11:23 yeah and i really think that for most or most missions it's not going to make sense but like you said that transaction
11:30 transactional like hot in the moment like stuff is like does make sense and it would be
11:35 used in only only those instances but honestly like an animal shelter
11:42 like there's not going to be like much of that kind of like in the moment hot spot like oh my gosh you need to respond
11:47 now because we're you know because of you know the the wildfire that's taking out like 5 000 houses like you don't
11:53 have that type of like in instance i would still be curious to see if there is an opportunity to see how text to
12:00 give or just like a texting program can actually result in maybe kind of like ongoing stewardship of like story
12:07 sharing or information sharing or usefulness sharing so that's one of those things where it's like i don't think it's completely
12:14 completely useless and dead to me but it's one of those things where i actually think i would be curious to see if there's an opportunity to be like
12:20 have a motivational monday of like or like if you are the animal shelter like let's just send you a cute picture of a
12:25 cat today because everybody loves pictures of cats in the middle of the day no one's gonna lie i would a hundred
12:31 percent sign up for that could we please talk to our cat rescue friends
12:36 and have them send me a text every day i think it's just one of those like can you be useful to your audience through a
12:41 text to give program versus can you just ask your audience for money for a text to your program i'd be curious to see if
12:47 there's an opportunity there ... okay let's go to like our this one really kind of gets our goat we're gonna
12:54 go into gofundme gofundmes have always
12:59 graded grated my cheese in the wrong way because they're often misguided we often
13:05 have these like we as a society have like come into these like viral moments right like where you see something go
13:11 viral and you and we'll talk about viral campaigns as well but you see something online and suddenly like so and so
13:18 talked about it and so and so talked about it and all of a sudden like this organization raised 200 000 on their gofundme oh my gosh isn't that great
13:26 there's a lot of legal challenges with gofundme to start with ... and then the second thing you know with gofundme
13:33 is that ... you don't necessarily get ... if you're not set up correctly you actually have a
13:39 tax liability to deal with and so for instance individuals that want to raise money to it and we actually do see this
13:46 we saw this during covid ... the beginning of covid where individuals were raising money to help like a group
13:52 of students you know like get ppe or la or laptops or whatever it was
13:58 so it's it is good at heart but for instance if you end up raising forty thousand dollars you are taxable your
14:06 tax liable for thirty thousand of that because you as an individual are allowed to receive ten thousand dollars in cash
14:13 gifts during the year however you are not allowed to receive more than you know more than that
14:19 and so there are there have been some instances where individuals have had immense tax bills because they did not
14:25 set up their fundraiser ... correctly and they did not set up their fundraiser as a 501c3
14:31 um and now i'm going to hand it off to you Emily i know that you got some big feelings on this too well and so what

Fraud in GoFundMes

14:36 we've seen you know there is a ton of fraud in gofundmes i
14:44 and we we saw it so we see it so heavily in disaster response and recovery which
14:49 is terrible and awful and heartbreaking but like i don't trust a gofundme
14:54 i don't i don't donate to them i never never never number one number two
14:59 i'm going to interrupt that one really quick though because gofundme has started to put some things in place that if you are if you are a certified
15:06 nonprofit if you do have a 501c3 they will now put a little badge on your gofundme page that you are a certified
15:12 nonprofit and have gone through the certification process at least so i'll at least give you that
15:17 so here's my question though if i am a certified nonprofit why would i choose to do a gofundme over a
15:25 different kind of micro giving campaign that goes through my own like database and and merchant account why would i
15:31 choose that i don't know because you may not have set up your merchant account yet okay fair enough fair enough so
15:38 if you're an individual and you set it up and you actually raise real money which is the goal of your gofundme is to
15:44 raise real money you have a tax liability you as an individual human being and if you said in your
15:52 description 100 of this goes to whoever the beneficiary is you can't go back and
15:58 take those taxes out you're not allowed to so now you're in this position let's say it went fabulously well and you
16:05 raised 200 thousand dollars it's happened now you're in this position of either giving back two hundred thousand
16:11 dollars which is terrible or paying taxes on
16:17 990 000 of donations and so it's really painful and and you know in
16:23 those instances i know it's coming from a good place but so it's just so sad because people are trying to do the
16:29 right thing and trying to make a difference but just by not knowing the nuances of what they're
16:35 doing they're actually causing more harm than than good and i think this also just goes back to

Fiscal Sponsorships

16:41 what we were just talking about with text to give in terms of we got 10 minutes left ... this goes back to the the concept that we were just talking
16:48 about with text to give of like it's that really fast kind of like it like knee-jerk reaction giving right and so
16:54 this is another type of knee-jerk reaction like set up as well and so
16:59 having and it goes back to again having systems in place like having having a merchant account set up having you know
17:05 a donor database set up having a way to take donations as a young non-profit or having a fiscal sponsor if you if you do
17:13 not have a 501c3 yet so i think that's just really important to like check those boxes because
17:19 jumping out ahead of yourself is like a really hard thing to do and even like ... this save the san marcos foothills
17:25 campaign here as soon as they got rolling they got a fiscal sponsor because they knew they
17:31 were going to need a fiscal sponsor in order to raise the 18.6 million that they did so it wasn't like oh it's
17:38 grassroots it's really successful when it's grassroots like even grassroots organizations like need a fiscal sponsor
17:43 or a form of that kind of like like physical checkpoint to because it protects you on the long it protects you
17:50 as the individual in the long run too so let's let's talk about fiscal sponsorships so um
17:57 never not once not a single dang time in my entire career have i been able to
18:02 talk someone out of starting a nonprofit never not once and what i tell people
18:08 is ... don't file your c3 until you've raised twenty thousand dollar two hundred
18:15 thousand dollars that's a lot of zeros two hundred thousand an average fiscal sponsorship will take ten percent of
18:22 your donations we in a former life ran micro non-profits so we were the only staff
18:29 for all volunteer organizations don't do it anymore used to do it we couldn't run even the smallest
18:35 organization for less than twenty thousand math is hard ... ten percent of two hundred thousand is twenty thousand
18:41 until you raise two hundred thousand don't file your c3 go under a physical sponsorship now
18:47 if our our fourth shiny object that we hate
18:52 is a facebook fundraiser and you cannot set up a facebook fundraiser if you
18:57 don't have your own independent c3 so the siren song of the facebook fundraiser is oh it's for grassroots
19:03 it's for super tiny scrappy organizations but you shouldn't have your c3 until you've raised two hundred
19:09 thousand dollars based on my not humble opinion so don't do a facebook fundraiser
19:14 based on my not humble opinion way to own that the reason i don't like facebook
19:19 fundraisers is again data you do not get the data information of any money raised
19:25 on on the on the platform and that drives me bananas ... because again like you so for
19:32 instance let's say you get like 100 donors that give through facebook that's 100 individuals that you do not get
19:38 information for and that to me is like really um
19:43 a loss like that that to me is like almost like a like a fiscal liability that you have a hundred
19:49 people giving to your organization that you have no way to follow up with you have no way to connect them to your
19:54 mission you have no way to just actually like follow up with them and so like it's
19:59 to me it's a huge fiscal loss in the long run because yeah you get the ten thousand dollars but at the end of the day like how much is it costing you or
20:06 what's the opportunity cost for getting that um
20:13 bernardo yes they are shiny objects to avoid ... but they're also very common too that's
20:19 that's the hard part just to kind of give like a quick little backstory or a funny story i was ... i
20:25 was on linkedin the other day and i saw that facebook was actually hiring for for project manager to oversee basically
20:31 this program and i'm sitting there going like man that would be a fun program to burn down because they were also talking
20:37 about must love giving tuesday and i'm like oh girl no about that um
20:42 because facebook fundraising is hard from this it's just like the return on investment isn't there you don't get the
20:48 donor information you don't even get to like even know easily who all is fundraising for you so
20:54 you don't even know who your biggest like digital supporters are so it's one of those things where it's like have
21:00 have the button there if you want it but it's also be like don't put the work into it because it's a lot of work for
21:06 not a lot of return on investment and in the long run you're not going to get that donor information and then your b
21:12 so again it's the you get the new donors but then they're gone the next year and that to us is the like really focusing
21:18 on keeping donors year over year okay girl we got five minutes
21:23 you want to just go into things that you do need to do no very quickly goodness gracious do not do an ice
21:29 bucket challenge goodness gracious it has nothing to do with your mission why are you doing this cold water sucks like
21:36 i don't like and you can't make someone something go viral like just don't do it
21:43 okay we're moving on just don't do it so Kristiana what are the five things that organizations need to do before they get
21:51 that siren song text to give so i really think looking at what your year-over-year retention rate is is

Five Things to Do Before Text2Give

21:58 really important so how many donors like what percentage of your donor database is giving to you three years in a row i
22:04 think that's a huge number to look at and it's very trackable if you have a good database but also make sure your
22:10 database is cleaned up prior to this ... because if you are doing a really good job of keeping your donors engaged year
22:16 over year that means that you are doing a really good job of the basics of making sure that you're communicating making sure that you're telling compel
22:23 like having a compelling ask ... and that you're keeping them engaged you know throughout the year so they don't just
22:28 feel like you're hitting them up at the end of the year so i would say like if your three-year rolling average is like
22:34 35 of donors staying on that's that feels like a very low threshold but more than
22:40 but more than two-thirds on an average basis of new donors never give again so if you're doing 35 like recurring you're
22:48 doing excellent so i would say look at that first because it means that you actually are doing a good job of keeping
22:54 your donor database engaged also with that making sure and with that
22:59 means that you're doing all your basics correctly like you're thanking them in a proper time you know after they give the
23:04 gift you are stewarding stewarding them afterwards they're feeling engaged ... they don't just feel like it just
23:11 doesn't feel like a transactional relationship so it feels like an ongoing relationship ... so number one is achieving at least
23:18 35 percent of a rolling average three-year donor retention thing number
23:23 two my pet peeve is getting your thank you and receipt
23:29 and acknowledgement out within 48 business hours and i don't just mean
23:34 that generated from your merchant account i mean a real meaningful thank you even
23:39 for a small gift and it can be a super quick phone call it can be a handwritten email
23:46 like a personalized email a handwritten note from a board member we're moving a lot of our clients onto a program called
23:53 think view which is a really easy program to deliver ... personalized video messages and it makes
23:59 it super easy to record it and deliver it thing number three because we gotta
24:04 keep it moving you need to have a clean usable database with at least two people
24:13 in your organization who know how to use it this is terrible we see huge turnover
24:18 in the development role so we see so many organizations where one magic person
24:24 knows how to use the database and then they move on to a different organization and everything's ruined so
24:30 clean usable database and two staff people who know how to use it number four

Annual Giving Program

24:37 an annual giving program that you actually use so an annual giving program is basically
24:42 like a nut a working living document that has an annual communications and development program and i always think
24:48 that communications and fundraising need to go hand in hand they should not be separated but what how are you communicating with
24:54 your donors how are you communicating with your external supporters how are you communicating with your advocates what is your ask cycle and it doesn't
25:01 have to be just like your mid-year letter and your end-of-year letter because that is really boring and outdated ... but what are you doing to
25:07 make little asks throughout the year what are you doing to kind of like have different opportunities for giving for
25:12 different programs and then also like just having that rolling on an annual basis so you can actually have a
25:19 prediction of what each of those asks is going to generate as well so we recommend around like four to five like
25:26 asks a year one to two of them being major but also just making sure that you have opportunities throughout the year
25:32 to be highlighting the work that your organization's doing and even if it's a small like fundraising goal of like ten
25:37 thousand dollars like you're still like getting that opportunity to get people engaged but also again that
25:42 communications aspect of the annual giving program is going to be your most important part of it
25:48 here is i think possibly the most important and easiest lift especially for small
25:55 organizations our fifth thing that you must do before you get text to give
26:00 is achieving 100 board giving now that's kind of accepted now that we need 100 board giving and we
26:08 are up leveling that to say a hundred percent board volunteerism now i don't care what the amount is uh
26:16 it should be a meaningful gift to each individual board member i have seen organizations where a ten dollar
26:23 oh there it is where a 10 gift is a meaningful gift for a board member and
26:28 that's fine i don't care what that number is it just needs to be meaningful to you i've heard organizations who say
26:34 if you're on our board we expect to be in your top three gifts annually that
26:39 seems reasonable to me my time is worth a lot more than my money so like that seems reasonable but the other thing
26:45 that i think is so important is 100 volunteerism on your board there are
26:50 lots of boards in our community that are super s cool
26:57 well and it's like cool to be on their board it's like a status oh i'm on this board so lucky for those organizations but
27:04 like especially when it's like a super cool organization people are on the board
27:11 for a status symbol not because they actually care about the mission vision values and you can tell if people care
27:16 if they show up with their most precious resource which is their time

Have We Done It

27:22 i absolutely agree have we done it i think we did it we did 26 minutes this time so you know we were a little over
27:29 but because we were fighting the street sweeper who was literally going back and forth in front of my house multiple
27:35 times and i was like what are you doing today ... if anybody has questions like go ahead and drop them in the chat or
27:41 like feel free to unmute yourself and ask them like that's totally cool too but you know this is one of those things
27:46 where it's like oh we need some creative fundraising ideas it's like yeah do we need creative fundraising i don't
27:51 need to do the do the basics really well ... and i know that it seems like as a consulting company it seems really
27:58 boring it is like for us to talk about the basics so often ... i have a quick
28:04 clarifying question yeah hi frank hello first of all hi Emily hi um
28:10 and i am going to go back and watch the replays i've missed too many of these clarifying question how many asks per
28:17 year ... did you say i thought i heard five i like four to five
28:23 okay and one or two would be major but quick examples of of how the lesser ass
28:32 um would look like yeah and so one of the one of the organizations that we're working this with this year ... we
28:38 actually did a amazon smile ask as weird as that sounds because they actually have a very
28:43 specific like material need list so we help them develop an ... or
28:50 an amazon wishlist list so we help them develop their amazon wishlist for supply
28:55 like for actual like we're seeing for teachers now when school's starting right exactly exactly and so that was
29:00 one campaign that we did so we also had a fiscal ask with that as well like you can you can go through our wish list or
29:06 you can donate here so that was two avenues for giving for that that had nothing to do with like a mid or in here
29:12 as well ... we also have an organization that happens that has like a
29:19 well oh gosh what was the word i'm looking for ... they actually are going to be doing a
29:24 new executive director announcement and so we're actually going to be doing a small fundraising campaign around that
29:30 as well and so it's not so they're more like soft asks versus major hard asks but are there
29:35 opportunities to create soft asks as well ... and we also put a soft ask ... within our annual reports as well we've
29:42 been doing more digital reports digital annual reports and digital annual report delivery and creating the opportunity to
29:49 give or to highlight you know as we're highlighting the story of the organization making sure that there's the opportunity to give alongside that
29:56 as well well and one fun thing to do when you're doing an annual report is as you're creating it you show your donors
30:03 the way that they will show up in your annual report and you can say you know we need to make sure that your name is
30:10 spelled properly you know if you're a a partnered up couple do you want both
30:16 names do you want the family like how so it's like hey Kristiana this is how you're going to look in our annual
30:21 report but what actually happens is people know what giving level they want to show up
30:27 as so they want the inside cover for their photo you'll get that question oh what what
30:33 will it take to move me to the next level ... and so that can be like again
30:39 like a soft app it's not even an ask it's just showing them it's actually stewardship showing them how they're
30:44 going to show up but then subconsciously they're like wait am i close to the next level and then you can get a little
30:49 micro gif ... Kristiana what do you think about ... like a programmatic shortfall
30:56 ask like you know we ... you know we're we're doing uh
31:01 all kids get backpacks i don't know and we're you know we've got 10 000 left that we need to raise in
31:07 order to get every kid a backpack whatever that is how do you is there a benefit or a drawback to
31:15 being public about possible funding programmatic shortfalls as a tool to get
31:20 an ask what do you think, I... I wouldn't say it's a tool that you should use often because it shouldn't be

Programmatic Shortages

31:26 a tool ... but i think if you do have programmatic shortfalls i don't think it's i think organizations tend to want
31:32 to be very coy about whether or not they're actually it you know have a fiscal issue
31:38 um i think in this day and age though like things are just like we just things are so unpredictable right now that we
31:44 don't no organization can possibly fully understand like what its operational or fiscal needs are until it
31:51 sees something like that and so i think if you do have an operational shortfall there's nothing wrong with asking for
31:57 that money or creating a micro campaign around it ... where i actually literally got an email
32:02 this morning from one of our clients saying that they just found a 14 000 hold and that that we're going to help
32:08 phil and but that's an easy thing to do though right like 14 000 is very easy to raise from that standpoint and it's a
32:14 very specific it's very specific it's timely ... and it's short and so those
32:19 are those are kind of like key components to a good campaign anyways but when your entire program
32:25 hinges on that it's not good but for instance like this organization has seen like a 200 increase in use of their
32:32 services so of course there's going to be a shortfall compared to what they had predicted like you know even if they had
32:38 predicted like last you know two years ago or on a five-year plan like of course it's going to be like massively
32:43 different because cove would make made everything massively different like so i don't think it's bad at all to but it
32:50 when it is your primary fundraising tool then it's bad then it's bad so only if it's actually true
32:56 only if it's an achievable amount so you probably don't want to come out and say whoops we got a million dollar shortfall
33:02 to fund our most our primary program probably not a good look ... so only if
33:07 it's true it's an achievable amount it's timely it's specific you know all those things
33:14 yeah got it what other questions do we have my friends
33:22 i think we've done it easy i've got a just a little comment yeah yes as a
33:27 board member you know we we also know that we need to donate and the um
33:34 our development department has you know really stressed that it's really important on grants that they are able
33:40 to honestly say that we have the hundred percent you know giving and all that but
33:45 i and i do a ... recurring monthly gift you know like annual give in the recurring gift but
33:53 i know i'm going to be getting those other asks in between so i kind of gauge okay this is my
34:00 minimum but i know it's not my maximum so i've got you know room to give you
34:08 know depending on what they are and we have a lot of special you know like education so every new site has a new
34:13 education center in it and we recently did a ... rehab to home to house seven
34:19 homeless women you know like the higher risk type thing so they did a soft ask for that because they needed to totally
34:26 you know decorate the house and and linens and you know you know all the stuff that you need to
34:31 put a home together and you know which is a really fun thing to do and so even though
34:38 i know that i would honestly give to that i know there was a lot of other people that normally give that
34:44 was like oh yeah i can give to that in addition so cristiano what do you think about you
34:51 know exactly this situation where like you're a board member you're actively invested in the day-to-day operations of
34:59 an organization do you think we should ... adjust
35:05 i don't know how to word this properly like i think personally i would rather have my board members
35:13 give monthly at at that max level and ignore the
35:19 special asks unless they're very very like moved or meaningful but what do you
35:24 what do you think about that i don't know this answer i actually don't know if there is an answer for it i think that you know at

Flexibility

35:31 the end of the day like if you feel like you're giving a reasonable amount on that monthly basis and you have capacity
35:36 and desire to like based on something that comes up i think that's totally fine and i but i also don't think that
35:42 like we need to pigeonhole our board members into having one style of giving or another yeah because again there
35:48 might be another organization that is important to them ... that they that they want flexibility for and i think that like allowing
35:55 allowing for flexible philanthropy to me is really important because then if people do feel like they have control
36:00 they feel like they can feel good about themselves and if we do get those opportunities where it is kind of that like you know that short specific like
36:08 even if it's you know they then have capacity to give like 100 or 150 dollars
36:13 i think that's great and so allow your allow your own personal philanthropy to remain flexible ... like
36:19 for instance like our own philanthropy like in our household remains fairly flexible we have our organizations that
36:25 we give to every single year but then there's also those organizations that like based on the work that they're doing based on like the world that we're
36:31 living in they might get a gift that ... that we may not have otherwise given um
36:36 and so but it's just one of those things like it gives you an opportunity to acknowledge the work that is happening in your community ... that you want you
36:43 know to kind of give a little kudos for ... but also still that investment style of making sure that you are maintaining
36:49 that ongoing relationship with the organization too so and actually Emily something that you
36:55 could mention as it pertained to to board giving and board volunteer time ... organizations or funders are and we and
37:03 i have this at the organization that i'm on the board of they're really asking the diversity question too
37:09 and this was a very interesting experience for for the board that i serve on because the board
37:15 was basically asked point blank what are you doing to diversify your board what is your plan
37:20 um and i really appreciated that question ... because i felt like it was kind of a
37:26 question that our board had been slightly kicking around a little bit versus like really digging into ... but i
37:32 really appreciated that offender asked point blank like because they looked at they looked at our board list we had to
37:39 list ... you know kind of you know everybody's identity on it and then they just ask point blank what are you doing to fix this because this is not a
37:45 diverse board and so there is an appreciation like funders do actually look at this stuff they do look at your
37:52 board giving they do look at board volunteer time they do look at board diversity and so your board really is
37:57 kind of like your first on like point of entry ... as it pertains to funders as
38:02 well as like volunteer hours too so making sure that you have like people who are engaging with your organization
38:07 in that really kind of different non-physical way as well and making the world open when possible speaking to
38:14 board diversity ... that for me is the primary reason why i don't recommend a
38:20 give or get program so what that looks like is if you sit on a board you know they set that annual amount that you
38:27 must give personally or you must like get from the people within your network
38:32 or or your business or your employer or whatever and so you know i personally have sat on boards with a big give or
38:40 get and you know a lot sitting alongside people with a significantly higher net worth than mine
38:46 which made a very unequal lift for us
38:52 and made me feel like trash a lot of the time because i wasn't doing you know i couldn't just you know write
38:58 that five thousand dollar check without thinking about it i also don't have an employer who can just write that five
39:04 thousand dollar check without thinking about it and so i really don't recommend a give or get i know it sounds
39:10 good ... to have some expectations around what your board members
39:16 bring in however i prefer the language of you know we we need 100 we're giving at a level
39:23 that is personally meaningful to you and like i said before i love that framing of we would like to be in your top three
39:29 gifts that seems to make perfect sense and if that's a hundred dollars a year awesome that's great that's so great
39:37 okay ... can you tell he's got a question yeah well i don't have a question i do have a

Staff Board Fatigue

39:42 comment but after all of this time with covid there's so much fatigue
39:49 on staff on boards even on missions and
39:54 but the kind of very direct information you're doing in these programs is great
40:00 because i suspect that boards at this point are wanting to jump at one of these shiny things
40:07 because they can't do what they've been doing they can't do it the same way and
40:12 oh goodness let's do something so thank you for getting it out there and do it more
40:18 hey oh you're so welcome thank you for that thank you for that nice comment compliment um
40:23 yeah it's i think as it pertains to like staff and board fatigue like you really nailed that on the head like
40:29 it's the ... people are you know we haven't been able to function the way that we normally function for a year and a half now and
40:36 that has been very unsettling for boards it's been very unsettling for staff ... and i think that like the thing that
40:43 Emily and i are really just trying to drive home is like if you just keep like digging in and doing the basics like
40:50 it will work it takes time ... but even the number of organizations that we've talked to ... who weren't like
40:57 engaging much in their like in their engagement and communications plan before you know you suddenly lose your
41:03 ability to connect with people in person they've had to actually focus on getting newsletters out getting donor
41:08 communications out doing those phone calls like finally doing those things that they should have been doing for years
41:14 um so if anything it's actually forced organizations to finally look at the basics ... you know as boring as they are
41:20 but they are really good like those donor calls from board members are really good they're really powerful
41:25 things ... but another ... item on staff fatigue and this is like a massive
41:32 tangent and then i promise we'll wrap up ... we have done a couple of board retreats
41:37 recently and those have been really fascinating to hear from staff during those board retreats
41:43 just how completely fried they are yeah ... staff has gone through an incredible
41:50 trauma over the past year especially those organizations that have had a requirement to be in person in the
41:57 office in order to execute their mission ... so if you're a board member i would highly recommend that you take a moment
42:05 or in one of your upcoming meetings to figure out how you can acknowledge and think your staff members in a like a
42:12 nice meaningful way because especially if they've had to show up like physically to work every single day that
42:18 just the the concept of the uncertainty of everything no one's been able to plan more than a couple of
42:23 weeks in advance like so everything's been so up in the air and they keep showing up day after day to to execute
42:30 your mission and so if you have an opportunity as a board you know it can be something as silly as a pizza party
42:36 or just like you know again handwritten thank you notes or whatever it is but think of a way that as a board member
42:42 that you can acknowledge and thank your staff for the work that they've really put in this past year ... because they're
42:48 the reason why your organization's still afloat and your organization's still running and having done that they've
42:53 also had to go through like a fair amount of ... professional trauma in
42:58 order to do that as well and so and professional trauma that trickles into personal trauma if if you are working
43:04 for an organization that is front line ... you had to show up every single day which is possibly putting yourself at
43:11 risk but now that trickles into your family number one if you have kids
43:16 who were homeschooling but you had to physically show up to your job like that's
43:21 additional like personal stress and one thing that we had to really come
43:27 to terms with within our organization was checking our privilege because we
43:33 did not need to show up in person we have the extreme privilege of being able
43:38 to sit behind our computers for the last 18 months and not within our professional world not put our personal
43:45 safety or our family safety on the line and that is not true for so many people
43:50 in our community and for a lot of our nonprofit you know employees they have had to
43:55 physically put themselves on the line to continue the mission and i and i would imagine that that's
44:03 not necessarily true for a lot of board members who who had that privilege like we had of being able to stay home and so
44:10 we're just you know acknowledging that i'm grateful for that i'm glad that we could do that
44:16 but but it is a piece of privilege that a lot of our employees didn't have and
44:21 they're fried and they're tired so buy them some pizza yeah and i think it's just that
44:27 acknowledgement of what the past year and a half has been just taking that extra step is going to go a long way to build your employee morale too
44:34 yeah ... okay so we have taken up so much of your time today we are so sorry but thank you so much for hanging in with us
44:40 for a full 50 minutes on a 25 minute presentation ... thank you guys so much for your time effort and energy this
44:47 morning it has been an absolute pleasure to kind of chat with you today and actually have a slightly more a more fun
44:52 interactive opportunity to talk with you ... we will be back on in two weeks um
44:58 the recording for this will be up ... and live in the next couple of days here feel free to send it to any of your
45:03 board member colleagues or staff members or go view any of our old ones too um
45:08 Emily and i are here available as well if you have any questions whatsoever or ideas for other ... upcoming building
45:14 forward series topics we think we're just going to keep rolling with this we thought this was only going to be six parts but
45:21 we think we're just rolling with it at this point ... send us ideas of things you want to
45:26 tackle or things that we will anti-tackle similar to what we just did today ... but otherwise thank you guys so
45:32 much for your time effort and energy we all hope you have an excellent rest of your day happy september on this
45:37 september 1st and i can't believe we are most the way through the year so thanks friends bye