When we’re scraping by each month, it’s natural to get transactional with donors. But people give to people, not causes.
The good news? By shifting your mindset and strategies, you can move from survival mode to stability and even abundance. 🙌
In this episode, I’ll outline the top mistakes nonprofit pros make that lead to fundraising fatigue and give you my signature science-backed solutions for…
🚨 Why you can’t find the right donors
🚨 How to engage supporters who aren’t ready
🚨 Building trust and partnership
If you’re tired of icky, salesy tactics and ready to start granting wishes and helping donors realize their dreams, first you have to learn what YOUR donors really want. I’ll show you how to connect, engage, and cultivate with all the tools and confidence you need for executive-level fundraising.
Whether you’re leading an established organization or building a fundraising machine from scratch, you’ll walk away fired up and ready to connect donors to your mission.
Important Links:
https://go.rheawong.com/big-ask-gifts-program
Episode Transcript
RHEA 00:00
welcome to three reasons why you are burned out on Fundraising. So you are in the right place today.
If you feel like fundraising is hard, frustrating, or confusing, or you’re feeling like you’re shouting into the wind to your donors, or you feel really overwhelmed, and you also feel like you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. Here’s what to expect in this presentation. We’re going to talk about the top three reasons that I’ve identified as to why fundraisers feel burnt out and most importantly, what to do about it.
The second part is that we’re going to talk a little bit about the big ass gift program, which is my six month group coaching program. And then the third piece is that we’re going to leave a lot of time for Q and A because I’m sure a lot will come up for folks. But before we jump in, I just wanted to introduce myself.
So I am Rhea Wong. I am currently in Brooklyn, New York. I am a recovering executive director. I have a podcast called Nonprofit Lowdown. I have a book, called Get That Money, Honey, the BS Guide to Raising Money for Your Nonprofit. I train folks in major gift fundraising and I am a dog mom.
And so some of what I’ve done is I ran a. An education nonprofit in New York for 12 and a half years. And I built a fundraising program from scratch. I’ve coached hundreds of folks to 2x to 10x their individual donor base. And I started basically from scratch and was raising 3 million a year, most, 70 percent of which were in individual gifts.
And the reason I focus on individual gifts is if you look at all of the monies given philanthropically in the last decade, the vast majority of it, 76 percent are given by individuals. And so I really believe that we need to have an individual gift strategy. Now, when I think about burnout and fundraising I want to talk about my personal story.
I was a 26 year old executive director. My first day on the job, I did two Google searches. Google search one was, what does an ED do? And Google search two was, how do you fundraise? And I laugh about it now, but I don’t think that this is a rare instance. I think a lot of us are put in positions where we’re asked to do really big things, change the world without the proper support and training.
And that can lead to burnout. What’s interesting though, is there are studies that have shown that burnout is actually connected to loneliness. So there’s a study that I liked from Harvard business review from 2017. you can have a company, a.
And Company B and let’s just say that they have the same workload, but Company A is thriving while Company B is reporting burnout. So what if the burnout that you feel is directly correlated with how lonely and unsupported that you feel? So Company A feels supported by their colleagues and leaders while Company B does not feel supported.
So it’s rarely about the. amount of work that we have to do. It’s about how we feel doing the work. And unfortunately, so often I hear EDs talk about funders that are not supportive, board members that are not supportive, staff who don’t really get it or think of fundraising as dirty work. And so is it any wonder that you feel burnt out?
You are lonely in this work and you’re in a survival mechanism because your nervous system is all geared up. So we’re going to talk about a couple of ways that we can try to calm you down and get you focused and moving forward. So I just want to launch a quick poll here. What are your biggest pain points with donors?
the number one reason 62 percent of you said that you don’t have enough warm leads followed closely by people aren’t responding to me, followed by, I don’t have enough time to focus on fundraising.
We’re going to talk about all that. We’re going to talk about why that might be the case. Okay. All right, before we jump into it, I just want to give us a little bit of context here that I think is really important. So I did an analysis of the letters that people write when they.
Sign the Giving Pledge. And for those of you who don’t know, the Giving Pledge is a pledge that billionaires and millionaires sign to give the bulk of their estate to charity and to philanthropy. And sometimes they’ll write a letter as to why they’re doing it. And the number one reason that people say that they’re going to leave their fortune to nonprofits or to charities is that they want to make an impact.
They want to give back. They have personal enjoyment. They personally love to see the fruits of their labor or it’s a family or religious upbringing or their stewardship. I’m paying it forward for the future generation. So what we see here is that people obviously want to give, right? We care about making an impact, but the question is, why are they not giving to you?
There are over a million nonprofits actually in the U S 1. 5 million nonprofits that they can give to. So the question is, why are they not giving to you? The impulse, the generosity is there, but Why is it not being directed towards you? Reason number one is, and I know this sounds very obvious, and for those of you who have studied marketing in any way, this might just be a duh yes, I know that they’re not, it’s not specific enough, but the chances are, even though you’ve heard this advice, you may still be struggling with getting tangible results to implement how you find your specific audience.
So I want to show you how you might do this. When we’re thinking about finding our specific audience, we have a couple of questions that we want to answer. Who are they? What do they care about? Where do they hang out? What problem are you solving for them? And how do they know about you? And so the solution I have for you is a donor avatar interview.
And I know this sounds very obvious like, duh, but you would actually be surprised at the number of people who don’t actually pick up the phone to talk to their donor. And what do I mean by a donor avatar? So I’m not talking about any random donor. I’m talking about the person in your current portfolio that if you had 10 more of them, your entire portfolio would change that.
You are the kind of person that you are really excited to talk to. Now, when we think about this donor avatar interview and shade is going to drop in the chat, it’s my gift to you, a template that you can use when you’re doing the interview. It’s not just about demographics. So demographics are. Their age their race, their education, all of this stuff that can be observable from the outside.
What we’re really looking for in a donor avatar interview is the psychographics. What do they care about? What is their value set? How are their values and their hope and desire to the world aligned with the work that we do?
And once you understand in a very deep level why they give, what’s in it for them, what’s their motivation, you can then tailor your messaging. The mistake that I see a lot of people making is that they are somewhat generic in identifying their avatar. Now, a lot of you, I’m guessing, have somewhat limited marketing budgets, and you don’t have the ability to market on the level of say, Apple.
Now, Apple has a lot more money than you do, I’m guessing. And even every single person on this planet, it doesn’t buy Apple. So there is no product on this planet that is for everybody. And so what I would suggest that you do is really go deep, not broad. The riches are in the niches. And so when we Cut through the noise to focus on the signal.
And we focus very specifically on our kind of avatar, our kind of person, the person who speaks directly to the, our mission and wants to be engaged. That’s when we start to see some real traction. That’s when we can develop avatars. Like I did a sample here. This is Jane Smith. So what you’ll notice about Jane Smith is.
Not only do we have demographic information, she lives in Portland, et cetera, et cetera, but she also tells us about her hopes and dreams and when we understand her hopes and dreams and values and the story that she wants to tell herself about the Kind of person that she is that is when we can get some traction and partnership
In in my program, we have a three step process that helps you get really crystal clear on your donor avatar so you can feel really confident about what to say and how to navigate your conversation in a way that gets you maximum results. So let me give you an example. I had one of I’m just thinking of Rosemary who was in my program.
She had a donor who was giving, 500 a year. On the back of this donor avatar interview, this person increased their gift to 50, 000 because she had never taken the time, or it was actually her predecessor, had never taken the time to really get to know this donor, to really understand what made this donor tick.
And just that little bit of time and that little bit of understanding changed everything about this donor. The gift and about the relationship. So the idea here is that once you understand your avatar on a deep level, once you understand their hopes and dreams, you can then craft messages for the donor that you seek.
It’s almost like having I think about bees in the field. In order to attract the right kind of bees, you need to put up the right kind of pollen. Not every pollen, not every flower is going to attract every kind of bee. And the point I want to make here that it’s not just enough to create one donor avatar, right?
It’s not a one size fits all model. And it’s not even about a script. I can give you a script all day. I can give you a template all day. But what we really focus on in the program is how to not just do the interview, but hear what’s not being said. Because oftentimes, when we’re communicating we’ll say something, but we’ll really mean another.
And what we’re doing in the Big AFSCF program is not just doing the interview, but we’re also able to help you quickly adapt to situations and to use your judgment and discernment to be able to move a conversation forward and move a relationship forward. And that happens because I have happened to sit in on, hundreds of these interviews, right?
There’s some pattern recognition over time that is helpful to you. And so you can really focus on the most effective strategies and the most effective messaging. And I will say about messaging, good messaging attracts, great messaging repels. What I mean by that is when you have a really strong and effective message, The people who will resonate the people for whom it’s for will automatically say, yeah, that’s for me.
You’re talking to me and the people that you’re not talking to will step away. And that’s a good thing. Like you don’t want to waste your time. So a question I get a lot is what if the donor I’ve got is not the one that I want? And this is a common question, right? So as an example, I can think of a one.
person who’d been through the program who said, Rhea, we have a senior citizen, white college educated professional retiree. That’s who is giving us the most. But what we really want are folks who are younger in their career, folks of color in the tech space. How do we do that?
So I think that there’s a twofold strategy here. Number one, you actually have to understand, as they say, then dance with them that bring you. Understand very deeply the donors that are already giving to you at a very high level and that probably represent about 80 percent of your donor base. Or rather your donation pool, but they’re 10 percent of your donor base.
And then once we understand the process, we can very intentionally reverse engineer the donor that we want. And we do that by understanding where they hang out, what messages they are responding to, what they desire, who their friends are, especially with, we know that. When we’re talking about younger donors or donors of color, it’s a very community based.
And so there is a way to do it, but without a process of understanding how we even identify them in the first place, you’re shooting in the dark. All right, let’s talk about problem number two. Your donors are not ready to talk to you. So real talk givers these days are much more likely to self cultivate and self solicit. I’m sure a lot of you buy stuff online. I buy stuff online all the time. How many of us talk to a salesperson when we buy stuff online?
I never do. In fact, I actively try to avoid talking to salespeople. This is very common behavior. And so a lot of the strategies that we’ve been taught historically about you need to ask people to go to coffee. You need to ask them to visit the program. You need to invite them out places is not commensurate with the kind of donor and the kind of.
Kind of customer consumer behavior that we see today 2024 and I’d be willing to bet that many of you have given gifts to organization when you’re ready, not necessarily when they’re ready. So you’ve maybe went on the website, maybe you did research, maybe you asked your friends, maybe you looked at the 990.
And then you decided on your timeline, this is not unlike the way other people give. And so what this looks like when people are not ready to talk to you is you end up sending messages like this, just ready to check in, can we meet for coffee so we can talk about our work? Love to invite you to this upcoming event or unspecific mass communication.
Guessing that you haven’t had a lot of success with these kinds of reach outs, the reason why it doesn’t work is that it’s very you centric, very org centric, and not specific to the donor. What do they want? Do you even know if they want to meet for coffee? Do you even know that they want to hear more about your work?
And the reason that this doesn’t work is that I’m sure that you yourself have received these types of messages and you’ve grown. And in fact, an interesting thing that happens in our brain is that these kinds of messages are actually very triggering because you sense that there’s an ulterior motive.
And so what’s important here is that you build the trust in the relationship before you ask for a transaction, before you ask for something from them, because they may not be ready to take this step. So then the question is, okay Rhea, how do I know if they’re ready to take this step? Like, how do I know that I’m actually talking to people who I, who want to talk to me versus sending out these random emails, asking for meetings that nobody gets back to you on.
So here is the solution. Donor surveys. donor surveys, why does this work? Couple different reasons number one, and I’m sure you all have had this experience of buying something and something a survey pops up in your face I tend to ignore them quite frankly, so I’m sure you’re then asking well Rhea if you’re ignoring donor surveys Then why would a donor fill out a survey quite simply put?
Because people think of the charities they support in a different way than they think about the businesses that they buy from. So there’s a professor Texas named Dr. Russell James. Dr. Russell James put people in an MRI machine and scanned their brains. And he talked to them about business, one part of the brain lit up.
Then he talked to them about philanthropy, and guess what? a different part of the brain lit up. It was the part of the brain that’s connected with family and with emotion. People think it literally is processed in a different part of the brain, and it’s also processed in the part of the brain that processes emotions.
So people will respond because they think of you as family. And so generally the response rate for these donor interview or these donor surveys is about 5 percent compared to 1 to 2%, which is industry average for businesses. Now let’s talk about the survey for a second. This survey is not a research tool.
I want to repeat that. It is not a research tool. This survey is actually a tool for engagement. And essentially what it does is it opens up a channel for two way communication. It allows people the opportunity to raise their hand to say that they are ready to talk. And if they fill out the survey and they say that they’re not ready to talk, you still steward them.
Like you’re going to actually acknowledge that they filled it out, but you’re going to leave them alone until they are ready. And so in the program, we actually have a 12 question survey that has helped my clients accelerate their progress and to win them donors with people who actually want to talk to them.
So as a fundraiser, where I want you to be spending your time is really 80 percent of it on cultivation, not on identifying and chasing down prospects. So I have one example here Josh is someone who went in through the program early and he had a lot of really high potential, high capacity contacts, but he wasn’t quite sure who wanted to talk to him, who was engaged, who was interested.
And so by pushing out the survey to his audience, and there are some strategies here around who you’re pushing it out to, how you message it and how many you push it out to, which we’ll cover in the program. I believe within three months he was able to clear a hundred thousand dollars from brand new donors because he was able to identify the right ask with the right people at the right time.
Biggest
problem number three and this problem number three is connected to the other two problems is that your audience does not sufficiently trust you. I want to talk here about the three different types of trust. So there’s competency trust. Are you good at the thing that you say that you’re doing? And as a sector, we lean very heavily on competence trust.
We talk about the impact, we talk about the numbers, we talk about the data, we talk about the stories, right? We’re very good at showing that we’re good at what we say we do. Then there’s community trust. Community trust is, does somebody that I trust say that they trust you? And this is where folks like volunteers and board members come into play.
It’s a halo effect. I’d be willing to bet that a bunch of you have given to organizations that you knew nothing about but you gave simply because someone you love asked you to give. I certainly have. I give to my niece’s preschools. I don’t even have kids. And then the third is the caring trust. The caring trust is, do you care about me?
As a person, I think as a sector, we don’t do a very good job with caring trust, which is why we have attrition problems, which is why we have people who don’t get back to us because they sense that we don’t actually care about them. Now, I want to talk about brain science for a second here. When we feel stressed, when we feel burnt out, when we feel like we’re crunched for the money, our brain goes into what we call survival mode.
This is when your amygdala is operating in a fear state. And when you are operating in a fear state, when you’re operating in a survival state, you get really transactional with people, right? You start to see people as numbers and if we’re being really honest with ourselves and I will cop to this myself, I’ve done it myself, is I’ve entered conversations with folks, with the sole purpose of solicitation, right?
So I’ll do this song and dance and I’ll pretend like I’m listening, but really in the back of my mind, I’m thinking about networking them into a gift. And people sense that. People have a very finely tuned sense for BS. And so when we are honest with ourselves, and when we get into the levels of listening, so the first level is I’m listening with an agenda.
The second level is I’m listening, I’m fully present, and I have no agenda. And the third level is I’m listening for what’s not being said. When we get to the third level of listening, that’s when we get true human connection and true human contact. And that’s when we build the trust. Because when we Think about ourselves as fundraisers.
We are actually providing value to our donors, right? They have a problem or desire, and by solving it for them, you build trust. And by building the trust, you build the relationship. And by building relationship, you not just build the potential for a donation, but a long term partnership. So for the mathematicians, here’s a little formula that you can think about, the trust quotient.
We have on the numerator, the deposits, and on the denominator, the withdrawals. And what you’ll notice is that there’s 2x. Withdrawals compared to one X deposits, which means that every time we ask for something that is a withdrawal and if we have not sufficiently built up the deposits will be in deficit right for those of us remember math you can’t divide by zero your donors are naturally coming into the conversation from a place of skepticism because especially high net worth individuals are asked for things All the time by all the people, and so they have what we call the trust hurdle or trust gap.
And so as fundraisers, we have to establish our trust quotient, which is the interactions and the moments that we are building trust such that it overcomes their trust hurdle. And so if we are able to do that, we have a deal. And if we are not able to do that, there is no deal because we do business. We buy things with people that we trust.
So no trust. No transaction. And so the question is, okay, fine, Rhea, like what does it mean to build trust? So it looks like deposits and withdrawals. So deposits look like being really clear about a cultivation journey. It means being really clear about timelines. Often as fundraisers, we play hide the ball and we.
Ask people for coffee and they’re not clear about our intentions and they’re not sure whether they’re there. And we’re thinking that they’re on a cultivation path. They’re thinking, I just like to have coffee with them. It’s a very confusing process. And so what we teach in the BAG program is how to be transparent about embarking on a journey together that is co created.
We also want to think about how we give them the victory they seek with clear impact reports. Because if we remember at the beginning, everybody. Gives for a reason, whether it’s they want to make an impact, they want to give back, et cetera, et cetera. So help them close the loop in their minds about the impact of their gift.
And we have thoughtful, personalized followers. I don’t know about you, but when I receive an email that’s, hello friend, it doesn’t really make me feel great. And so by thinking about the needs, wants and desires of our donors for impact in the world, we start to build trust. And we position ourselves as.
A guide. So all of us are the heroes of our own story, right? We all are the stars of our own personal movies. The mistake that I often see fundraisers make is they talk about the organization or they talk about their the clients that they serve as the heroes of the story. We did this, we’re so great.
That is actually a mistake. The way that we should be thinking about how we interact with our donor is they are the hero of the story. And we are the Yodas. We are the mentors that help them to achieve the victory that they seek. Because at the end of the day, when I lay my head down on my pillow at night, I tell myself, I am a certain kind of person.
I’m the kind of person that supports education. I’m the kind of person that cleans the ocean, et cetera, et cetera. So how are you helping them to tell themselves the story of who they believe they are and to help them along that journey and that path of self actualization? Because as a fundraiser, the value that you are giving is to help them to live in their meaning and purpose.
So presumably, especially for major gift individuals, these are folks who have been Successful in their careers, have made their wealth, maybe have families, right? They’re at a point in their lives where they’re thinking about legacy and legacy is only possible when you have meaning and purpose. And so as a fundraiser, the gift that we’re giving is helping them to manifest their meaning and purpose in the world and their legacy.
So to recap, who are your donors? What do they want? When do they want it? How do they want it? And how are you giving them a meaningful experience?
So the way that you get there to recap is that we are going to identify your ideal donor and not just who they are, but where they came from. So you could reverse engineer that process. And what is it they care about then by using a survey mechanism, you. You are able to identify assets, interest, and timing to start the relationship.
And once you have the relationship, you create value and trust before asking for a transaction. It’s a very simple three step process. So the way that I think about my job is I’m like a personal trainer for fundraising. And you know with personal training, it’s a pain in the ass. Like you don’t want to do it, right?
You’re like, oh, I don’t want to go to the gym. But you know that there’s someone holding you accountable. I want to tell you a quick story. . There is in California this place called Death Valley. It’s a desert. It’s called Death Valley because literally people. They thought nothing could grow there. They thought it was death.
But in 2007, it received 11 inches of rain. And over the next few weeks, you couldn’t see the floor of Death Valley because it was covered in flowers. And so what if Death Valley wasn’t dead, but it was simply dormant? What I’m posing to you is a question of what if everything that you needed, you already had, and it was just a matter of thriving in the right environment and getting the right inputs to help you reach the potential that you know is possible.
So I am obsessed. I’m obsessed. As you heard at the beginning, I was a clueless 26 year old ED and I went from a 250, 000 budget to a 3 million budget, but it was really painful. There was a lot of trial and error and I made a ton of mistakes. So I, in my next phase of career, have become totally obsessed with helping executive directors and DODs like yourself, avoid burnout.
I want you to be successful without making all of the mistakes. And I’ve had sleepless nights. I’ve had the 4am wake up in a cold sweat. I’ve had the sweating over making payroll. I’ve been there and it sucks. And the reason why I do what I do, the reason I’ve created my program, the reason I put out content, the reason I wrote my book is that I know that the work that you do is what we need.
in the world. I care so much about so many things. I care about kids getting to go to school and getting fed. I care about clean oceans. I care about pets being in loving homes. And I, as one person, am not able to do all of the things, but you are. And so the more successful you are, the more successful we are as a world.
And so what I’m proposing is that much in the way that you think about yourself as the Yoda to your donor’s hero’s journey, I’m your Yoda in that I want you to achieve the victory that you seek, leading the world and making the world a better place. Enter the Big Ask GIF program. So Big Ask GIF is the culmination of 15 years of frontline fundraising and 5 years of coaching.
And when I first started out in fundraising, I did all the things. I read every book, I took every training, I met with every person who would meet with me, and often I found that their advice didn’t really relate to me, or the size of my organization, or didn’t provide a framework, it was very vague. BAG is a culmination of all of my years of frustration to provide a program that is relatable, actionable, and results driven.
So a couple of reasons why you might want to sign up for BAG. First of all, you’ll get clarity about how to maximize your ROI. And one question I want you to ask yourself is, especially if you’re feeling burnt out, is how much is it costing you to not maximize your time because you don’t have clarity?
What are you missing out on? Your ROI with all of the time and energy and money that you’re spending, such that you’re getting a return on that. Leads will come in and convert because you’re actually focusing on the top 10%. So I’m not saying that this is going to be the results for every single person, but what we have seen is that folks have been experiencing 400 percent ROI once they implement the systems and processes.
Point number three, you’ll get clear coaching and accountability from me and my team. So working on the wrong things ends up costing a lot more time and money, and we’ve all been there, but having coaching and accountability from people who’ve gone through what you’re going through and make the world, it makes a world of difference and accelerates the results.
And so part of what I’m offering is not just the accountability and the coaching, but also being part of a community because I know as. Eds and leaders. There are things that you deal with that literally you cannot talk about with anybody else except for other eds. And so we’re here for you as a support group.
And then finally, the three part formula to BAG is about skills. So we’re building your technical skills, but it’s also mindset and it’s also habits. And when you combine the skills, mindsets, and habits, that’s when you start to see real attraction. And so I’ve coached over a hundred people in these different areas, and I’m able to identify which of these areas are the bottleneck for you.
And the problem that I see often is that folks think that they have a problem. So they think they might have a skills problem. They think, Oh, if I read that one more book or that listen to that one more podcast or read that, go to that one more webinar, everything will change. And yet nothing really changes.
And the reason why is that often the problem that you think you’re having is not actually the problem. And so by working on the wrong problem, you would have solved it if it were the right problem. So by working on the wrong problem, that’s when you end up being stuck because it’s a symptom of spending too much time and energy working on the wrong problems instead of the right one.
Just to talk about big ass gifts for a second. It is a, you’ll get, in addition to the six month coaching, you’ll have 12 months to access the online content, which is called my space method, which stands for state of mind. Process assets, community engagement. That’s a 3, 000 value. You’ll get templates, tools, and done for you scripts.
Again, a 2, 000 value. You’ll get access to industry experts handpicked by me. You will get Slack channel access and there are assignments along the way that I will personally review and give you feedback on. Of course, you’ll get the weekly coaching. And if you apply today, you will get a fast action bonus, which is two 30 minute one on one sessions throughout the six month program.
So the total value of all of that is actually 24, 000. But today it is 84. 97 for the six month program, or if you pay in installments, it’s 14. 97 per month for the full six months. A couple of success stories that we’ve had. So there’s Jenny who received her first million dollar gift. There’s Reza who raised 300, 000 more in three months.
There’s Yukari who went from literally zero when I first met her, she was starting from scratch and she raised 1. 5 million in a year. And there’s Marvin who got his organization’s first six figure gift. So this stuff works folks. And I would not be out here trying to sell you on something if I didn’t believe and see the results myself.
So apply today would love to see you in the program. The other thing I should mention too is that I am, limiting it to 20 folks. And the reason is, look, I could open it up to a much bigger cohort, but I keep it small because I want to be able to give you as much personalized attention as possible to really make sure that I’m diving deep and supporting you in the ways that you need.
The other thing that I just want to mention is all of the information that I have amassed in this program, I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars amassing between a program at Harvard, a program at Columbia, MIT, and the personal coaching. And so this is really the culmination of everything.
So with that I’d love to get to some questions.
SHAY 31:42
Rhea, our first question we have is from Juliana. Hi, they want to know, what do you recommend about creating events? EDs and board always like creating new events, cocktails, galas, etc.
RHEA 31:52
h, Juliana. Sweet, sweet, Juliana. I, okay. Here’s my shtick about events. I am not a fan. Okay. I have a bias. I so dislike events, I did not plan my own wedding.
I think events are generally not where I see if I started from scratch, I would not start with events. The reason being that A. It takes a lot of effort, right? So when we think about events, we often calculate the hard costs of the venue and the blah, blah, blah, whatever. We often don’t consider the soft costs and surprise, the soft costs often falls on the staff.
So when we think about the return on investment, it’s often way less than we think it is on paper. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is I don’t love events because I think. When we think about major gift fundraising in particular, the value is really around the depth of relationship and to when it’s a big event like a cocktail or a gala, you really don’t have the opportunity to make deep connections.
So I like to think of events as a top of funnel strategy to bring people into the fold so that you can start to develop a relationship with them. Oftentimes, the reason why boards will say, it’s let’s throw an event is that they are uncomfortable with solicitation. And so it’s much easier for them to ask their company to buy a table or to invite their friends to a table, as opposed to entering into what I think is the much more intimate business of one on one solicitation.
So all to say that I think that events should be. A tool in your arsenal, but I don’t think it should be the main tool until you’ve really developed a system around individual gifts and in particular, major gift fundraising. Hope that answer the question. All right.
SHAY 33:34
How do we decide the cadence for email communications to donors?
RHEA 33:38
Okay, so I probably need a little bit more information on this, but in general, I would say you are probably not communicating with your donors enough. Now, I know that some of you are probably on my mailing list. You will notice that come hell or high water, you get a weekly email, whether you read it or not is, of course, I’d love you to read it.
But the point is that I send it. So every week I’m top of mind for you. Like you see my name coming across your inbox. So with respect to email, I’m going to guess you’re probably not sending enough. I would say send as much email as you possibly can. Now, I want to talk about social media for a second because I think, I didn’t really understand the point of social media, to be honest.
I thought of social media as an interruption to my day and I was like, Oh my God, it’s just like another thing I have to think about. Social media is very helpful. For the top of funnel. What I mean by that is it helps to, develop brand awareness about who you are and what you do to people who don’t know you, but the real money is in the email because even though you might donate to say a Facebook fundraiser or whatever.
Our emails are very intimate. If you’re in my inbox, that is a much more intense interaction than if I just like something on social media. And so what we’re seeing is that conversion rates on email is much better than conversion rates on social media. So I don’t know what the, I don’t know if the question is about donor communication or about solicitation, but donor communication is, I think you should do it as often as you can on a.
On a regular basis. So if you can only manage to do it once a month, do it once a month, but please make sure you do it once a month. Ideally, I would say once a week is great. And when you are in a campaign, and again, this will mileage will vary, but definitely as you’re going through the campaign you need to send six we know that it takes at least there’s some ridiculous number, it was like 30 touch points before somebody actually took an action.
And so I think the idea that people are stressed out about is if I send too many emails, they will unsubscribe. Good. You want them to unsubscribe because they’re not your people. Because if somebody is hearing from you and they don’t want to hear from you, they’re probably not going to donate to you.
So I don’t know if that answered your question, but it’s a nuanced thing, but the answer is more is better. But, and let me just say this, more high quality content is better, right? So if it’s one way content, if it’s content that is asking for withdrawals all the time without providing value. Don’t send those.
Send content that is going to be interesting, entertaining, inspiring to your donor base.
SHAY 36:10
We have a question from Elena. I’m going to paraphrase it because it’s a little long. So basically they live in a rural area and they feel like the non profits and donors, potential donor prospects are congested with the number of non profits in that area.
How would you propose that they work around that?
RHEA 36:27
Sorry, who asked this question? Elena. Elena. Elena. Elena, your problem is everybody’s problem in that everyone has a story that they tell themselves about why their donors are not giving. Here in New York, the story we tell ourselves is there are so many nonprofits that donors couldn’t possibly give.
In small towns, it’s there are so many nonprofits and so few people. In international context, it’s people don’t really give. The truth of the matter is people give. It’s in human nature to give. The reason why they may not be giving to you is that your message may not be sharp enough.
You may not have identified your ideal donor avatar. You are not speaking specifically to your person. You’re probably a little too generic. So the, what I would say is I, Even though you are in a small market, I am skeptical that you have fully saturated the market and by fully saturated, unless you’ve spoken to every single person in that town and they have turned you down, there is still more capacity there.
So I would say to me, really backing up and thinking about who am I talking to? And what is the message that I am specifically putting out for them, such that the. That’s going to be the way that you cut through the chatter.
Oh, thanks. Thanks, Nicole.
SHAY 37:40
We have a couple people that are dealing with what looks like to be the same issue. So they’re in community already. So they’re basically asking about how to support people who are brand new to giving major giving and fundraising.
RHEA 37:51
Brand new as far as the donors are brand new, as far as their staff, let me rephrase as far as their staff.
Okay. Bye. Bye. Send them to me, that, that’s a short answer. So really a major gift fundraising is in art and science. And I think it’s different than like grant writing. It’s different than event fundraising. It’s different than corporate sponsorships because it is so highly individualized. What I teach is really a framework around how you develop relationships in a really transparent and authentic way.
And one thing that we didn’t touch on that I really do want to touch on is. So much of why we get in our own way as fundraisers is that we have a lot of stuff about money. We have narratives that we tell ourselves about money. A lot of us have trauma associated with money. And let me take a step back. I want to talk about trauma for a second.
So when we think about money, they’re for. types of trauma that we can discuss. And actually in the program one of my guests, Shula, will be talking about the trauma of money. there is ancestral trauma. So epigenetics, it is a branch of genetics where we have actually inherited the trauma through our DNA.
Especially for folks who’ve come from poverty or are descended from enslaved peoples or disenfranchised peoples or people whose lands have been stolen. Like we literally carry that trauma in our bodies. There is a relationship trauma. So trauma inflicted by our caretakers, whether they meant to or not, there is social trauma.
So trauma like racism, sexism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, et cetera. And then the fourth is systemic trauma. So these are policies that. Are specifically designed to keep wealth out of the hands of certain groups of people. That’s a big, messy stew, right? And then we come to fundraising expecting to be able to relate to people and relate to money without unpacking all of the stuff that we carry and all of the narrative and all of the trauma and all of the baggage that we carry about money.
I don’t know if this answers the question, but I, to me, the first step in being able to be a really effective fundraiser is unpacking all of the trauma and on all of the narrative around stories. And a lot of times the stories that we tell ourselves. are not that helpful, right? And I’m not here trying to tell you what to do, right?
You do what you want to do. I’m simply here to shine a light on is the story that you’re telling yourself a helpful narrative? Is it the story that you want to be telling yourself to move forward? And a lot of the times, the stories that we hear or that we tell ourselves are like money is the root of all evil.
The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Rich people are different and they did bad things to get the money. I could go on. Is this story serving you and particularly when you have to relate to people? It’s very hard to relate to them as humans if you have preconceived notions about who they are based on external things like we, I think we can all agree that it’s bad to base to judge someone based on the color of their skin.
Why do we then feel okay about judging them based on the amount in their bank account?
SHAY 40:46
We have actually a couple of questions coming in about the program. Someone is asking. They’re super busy. Can you do this program even if you’re as busy as an executive director?
RHEA 40:56
I would say that you should do this program especially if you’re busy as an executive director. Okay, now, controversial point.
I think EDs need to be spending 65 to 80 percent of their time fundraising. Why? Because as an ED, you are the only one uniquely qualified to be the face of the brand. And so what I help EDs do in particular is to declutter, to delegate, to eliminate or automate all of the stuff that is not pulling the levers on growth.
Because at the end of the day, as an ED, I get it, you have a 50 bajillion things to do, and I would argue that fundraising is the thing that’s going to move you, move your mission ahead the fastest. That is the lever that you can pull. And so what I really think that this is the value of ED is busy as a state of mind.
And unless we make intentional time for the things that matter, whether it’s fundraising, whether it’s spending time with our family, and I think we’re addicted to busy in our sector, that’s a whole other topic I can talk about on at another time. But I think if you’re busy if you’re struggling to prioritize, if you’re struggling to carve out the time necessary to do the reps, again, there’s a fitness analogy here, right?
If you are not going to the gym, if you’re not doing the reps, how can you expect to be healthy at the end of it? Similarly here, if you’re not doing the reps, if you’re not showing up, if you’re not. Making the phone calls, doing the meetings, et cetera. How can you expect to raise the money that you need by the end of the year?
So all to say, I absolutely think. If you are busy and struggling to carve out the time to fundraise, this is a great program because it will force you to show up once a week and do the work. However, if you are busy and you cannot commit to doing the work, then this is absolutely not for you. This program is for people who are doers.
I was just thinking about it this morning. This is for people Who are about it, not just talking about it.
SHAY 42:48
We have a question coming in from Sarah. They’re asking if their development director can take the program with them.
RHEA 42:52
Can take the program with them. Oh, as like in tandem. Yes. You absolutely can. And I actually really encourage that. Right now I have an ED DOD pair that are taking the program together. So if you sign up together, I am willing to consider some special pricing, so just DM me later and we can. We can talk about that. But it’s actually a brilliant idea to do it in tandem.
SHAY 43:23
Someone is saying that they are a longtime fan of your podcast and have read your book. What will they learn differently in the program versus what they’ve already absorbed?
RHEA 43:30
Ah, really good question. So I am a constant learner. A lot of the strategies that I’m teaching now are what I would call 2. 0 from the book.
So there’s a lot that’s in the book for sure a lot that’s not in the book. So for example, the survey strategy is not in the book. For example, some of the new techniques I’m teaching around how to engage with donors and solicitation. not in the book. The other piece is two is accountability. So it’s one thing to read.
I like to call it procrastinate learning. It’s one thing to absorb the information. It’s another thing to implement it. So I think the real power of the back program is that we are going to not just give you the content, but you’re actually going to put it to use, put it in action. And that’s really where you’re going to see results.
SHAY 44:13
All right. Somebody’s asking about their board. They said that they have a lot of friction with their board in moving forward. How would you support them in having the conversation to invest in the program?
RHEA 44:23
Ah, such a good question. Quite simply what I would ask a board is if they say no, here’s the simple question you ask. Okay. So what’s our plan? What’s our plan? Because often when we say no, it makes us feel safe. We say no because it’s less risky.
And I totally understand that, especially as a board whose job is fiduciary wellbeing of an organization. Without a plan for how to move forward, you’re just stuck in the same place. It’s like the definition of insanity. Like you keep doing the same thing over and expecting a different result.
And so the way I think about expenses, like there are three reasons why I Expend money. The first is ROI is it literally going to bring more money back in? And as I’ve demonstrated, like you really can’t lose money on this deal. Number two, will it give me back my time? Or number three, will it increase operational efficiency?
In this instance, the BAG program does all three things. You get an ROI on your investment. You will save time because you won’t have to make all the mistakes and you’ll actually be able to implement the processes that are most effective out of the gate. And number three, you will be more efficient at doing it.
So to my mind, it’s a no brainer. But again, with your board I think it’s worth helping them to get all of their anxieties out on the table. Because what we know is when people are Operating. It’s 95 percent emotion based. It’s like very, a very small percentage. And it’s actually logical. And so if the fear is like, what if we invest and we don’t see the return?
There’s a money back guarantee. What if we invest and it’s a huge waste of time? Probably not. Like we need to be focusing on fundraising anyway. what if Rhea’s a total quack and she doesn’t know what she’s doing? Okay that could be true, but I think if you’ve been partaking of any of my content in my book I think you can decide for yourself whether or not I’m a quack.
I think it’s just helping them to lower the friction on their own nervous system and their own anxieties to really get to a decision. Okay, final thoughts. would love for you to apply.
We offer this three times a year. So definitely if it’s not right for you now, perhaps it will be right for you later on. The only thing that I will say though, is I think 2024 because of the elections and just because of the state of the world shaping up to be, it’s going to be a tumultuous year.
And so the folks that are prepared, the folks that have clarity sooner rather than later are the ones who I think will come out on top. And so I would really say, especially knowing that end of year can be insane. Sooner rather than later is better because February is a perfect time to do, to plant the seeds for the harvest to come.
And it’s going to be a crazy year. So the more we can band together and support each other in our audacious missions, the better off we’ll be. So thanks so much, everyone.
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