🛑 Feeling the pinch in your fundraising efforts lately?
In the evolving landscape of giving, traditional donor methods are on the decline. As fundraisers, it’s essential to prioritize deep, meaningful relationships over mere transactions.
But how can we do that effectively in an era where people are more selective about where their dollars go? 🤔
In today’s episode of Nonprofit Lowdown, Rhea Wong sits down with the incredibly insightful Nathan Chappell to discuss the future of fundraising.
This isn’t just about adapting to change; it’s about pioneering a new era of generosity.
💡 With fewer people donating through traditional channels, our approach to fundraising needs a radical rethink. Nathan and Rhea dive deep into how we can create genuine connections with donors and reimagine the philanthropic landscape.
Nathan Chappell is not just a fundraising expert; he’s a driving force in the sector. As the co-author of The Generosity Crisis, Senior Vice President at DonorSearch, co-founder of Fundraising AI, and co-host of the podcast Fundraising AI, Nathan brings a wealth of knowledge and passion to the table.
His life’s mission? To bridge the gap between generosity and innovation, making giving more impactful and relevant in today’s world.
Ready to revolutionize your approach to fundraising and foster deeper donor relationships? 🎧
Tune in to this enlightening conversation with Rhea and Nathan to uncover practical strategies and inspiring insights.
Get ready for a discussion that will leave you inspired and equipped to tackle the future of fundraising head-on! 🌟
Important Links:
https://go.rheawong.com/big-ask-gifts-program
Second Annual Fundraising AI Global Summit with Nathan Chappell and Mallory Erickson on October 1, 2024: https://fundraising.ai/summit/
Episode Transcript
RHEA 00:00
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Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown, I’m your host, Rhea Wong.
Hey, podcast listeners, it’s Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today I am talking with my friend, Nathan Chappell, and we are talking about the future of fundraising. We got a lot to say on the topic, but before we jump in, I wanted to introduce my guest, Nathan Chappell. He is the co author of the Generosity Crisis, senior vice president at DonorSearch, co founder of Fundraising AI, and most recently, a co host of the podcast.
Of the podcast, fun, raising AI, Nathan, welcome to the show. You are a busy man.
NATHAN 01:06
I love it. Rhea. Thanks so much for having me. I’ve wanted to be on this podcast with you for so long. I’m I have a listener and I just love the energy that you bring to the sector. So I’m looking forward to this.
RHEA 01:16
Oh my gosh.
That is so kind. you are involved with so many things, but let’s go into the Wayback Machine. Tell me about how you got started in fundraising because I don’t think anyone grows up as a kid and says, You don’t have to be a fundraiser.
NATHAN 01:31
Yeah, that’s so funny. And I love already the reference to the way back machine. So if you don’t know it, look it up. It’s a good reminiscence of of my Saturday mornings growing up, probably at the time when I started fundraising, actually, my earliest start in fundraising, it actually started Really more from the opposite end.
Like we were, I grew up in a single parent household. My dad essentially abandoned my sister and I, my mom worked several jobs. And while we were the recipients of a lot of charity, we actually were taught to the act of giving back and actually taking action. My earliest memory of fundraising was actually when I was eight years old and a friend of mine had nearly drowned in a pool and ended up with some traumatic brain injury.
My mom was a person of just very much of take action. If there’s something you can do it. And I held a fundraiser at straw hat pizza of all places. And I ended up in the local newspaper. So any sense that I would end up dedicating, several decades of my life and actually professional fundraising.
But when I ended up moving to professional fundraising, it actually made a lot of sense. Cause a lot of my early childhood memories were like, Building wheelchair ramps for Habitat for Humanity at a senior home just different things that we did and seeing people that helped our family along the way.
And it was just I never intended to go to school and become a fundraiser to your point. when I allowed life to take me down that path, it felt like I was home. And say to people, honestly, I spent 20 years fundraising and never felt like I went to work a single day.
RHEA 02:52
That is an incredible experience. I’m so glad I asked that and I’ve known you now for a little while and I didn’t know that about you. So thanks for sharing that. All right let’s jump into it because we all want it. We’re all sitting here thinking about it. Your book, The Generosity Crisis points to the fact that we are in the middle of a sea change in terms of the philanthropic field.
And I’m just wondering before we get into the, what do we do about it? Can you just give us some. Highlights of what has changed in the sector, certainly in the last couple of years and certainly post pandemic.
NATHAN 03:21
Yeah, I think for many people, the idea of the generosity crisis feels it resonates because I, I spent 20 years fundraising and, Frankly, a lot of that time, I felt alone in the sense that like I was leading organizations that essentially were every year, losing number of donors.
We tended to raise more money and I really prided myself on being super competitive and, raising historical records. But there was this underlying issue is that we are raising more money from less people year over year. And it didn’t matter where I was working. That was my thing.
Yeah. And that loneliness of that was like, wow, this just must be me. And I didn’t feel like there was a lot of narrative out there that was allowing me to really recognize the scope and scale, from a macro perspective of this sea change to your point. Until I started really getting into this in 2012, it was really inspired by the giving pledge and that came out in 2010.
I’m not a history buff, but I really like learning around the history of things that I interested in. And so I did a lot of research on, why the giving pledge was reminiscent of Rockefeller and Carnegie and this whole thing. And I got really excited about this idea that, generosity was going to take on this new shape and form, and it was going to reverse all these negative trends that I was seeing.
And it obviously didn’t. And so at a big picture, the stark news essentially is that, 20 years ago, two thirds of Americans gave to charity. Now it’s less than half and, 49. 6 percent until the new report comes out this year, which I imagine will be less. And the reality is that.
Never in American history have givers been the minority, and that should be a stark thing for us to wrestle with. as someone who tends to think and worry about the future more than the average person, it didn’t take a lot for me to project of okay, if nothing happens, where does this go?
And so I wrote the book generosity crisis out of concern but also I think to create a safe space for us to talk about the challenges, because I feel like. how do you make change if you don’t know what you’re dealing with? And so while it’s not a book that, gets me invited to a lot of dinner parties, it is a book that I think has created that safe space for people to wrestle with and think through and debate, like, where are we at and where are we going?
RHEA 05:25
Yeah. I’m so glad you went to this. So you and I last saw each other in Toronto at the AFP icon conference, which was my first icon actually. Oh, awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It was fun to see folks and it just felt like there was a lot of the same kind of conversations happening and it’s a little bit like the definition of insanity of like we keep doing the same thing, expecting a different result.
So I’m just curious from your perspective, like what’s it going to take to change the trends? Because I do think that, I have, let me put a pause on it. I have other questions about that, but. From your perspective, like what’s it going to take?
NATHAN 06:01
Yeah, I, that’s so interesting. Cause your perspective of icon and I’ve been going to icon is probably why you resonate with me so much.
You’re already, speaking my lung language, love language in so many ways of can’t do the same thing and expect a different result. I’m also someone that doesn’t shy away from change. I think that change is actually one of the hardest things for most people. And. That probably is one of the biggest detriments to, and the reason why the generosity crisis exists, because we get comfortable doing things the same way.
And then hope that someone else will take care of, the need for change. I think one is if we look at the negative trajectory essentially year by year, the systemic decline in charitable participation, which means translates to less people giving to charity. Essentially that is a symbol of inequality.
It’s a symbol that if philanthropy is still at an all time high yet less people are giving, giving is becoming, essentially owned by fewer and fewer people. I think it, that Alone, I think should cause some discomfort, but I don’t think things really change until the pain becomes great enough.
I think I, when I wrote the book, which has now been out for a year and a couple of months, I was a bit more Optimistic that if we just talked about generosity, we can make change. But I, over the last year did 85 presentations last year, spoke to around 10, 000 people and consistently received feedback that that’s other someone else’s problem or, my organization doesn’t like change.
and so I do think there’s going to be some consolidation in the sector, not to be a Debbie downer. at a certain point, there will be a tipping point that people say, okay. Like we’ve got to stop this. I have thoughts on what it will take to reverse it, but I think for right now, there’s still awareness building and the awareness building is this podcast and, books and people talking about the harder issues and being able to say, okay, let’s stop the madness.
And let’s get together and re envision a better, more vibrant philanthropic sector.
RHEA 07:55
I’m curious how you think. younger generations might play into this. So I know we hear a lot about Gen Z and now Gen Alpha and how they’re much more purposed, focused, mission directed. A, do you think that’s true?
And B, do you think that will help to see a reverse of the trends in terms of philanthropic participation?
NATHAN 08:17
the challenge with overall philanthropic participation are much, much more convoluted and much more broad than just generational differences. It gets into, even in part to how we, as consumers, purchase and, and this is where we talk about is the confluence of all these circumstances, but certainly, out of the conversations I’ve had over the last, two years around this there are, I think what you’re alluding to, that change in how the younger, like Gen Z.
Essentially even assesses why it, why a 501 ct three tax status even matters, right? We’ve heard this, we hear this more from Europe right now than we do here, but I think that’s where a lot of these trends start and then the U S adopts a bit later is that, I want to make an impact, what does the tax status have anything to do with that?
And we see that represented. In some amazing ways through whether it’s GoFundMe which I mean, again, is just doing tremendous good, but outside of the traditional confines of a 501c3 tax status or philanthropy together, and I don’t know if you’ve had Sarah Lomblin on this call, but like the rise of giving circles is just tremendous around the world and I think what it represents to your point, And I don’t know if it’s just generational, but I think generationally, I you’re a little bit less of a conformist is that you’re willing to look beyond what your parents did and what they taught you to do directly.
And you’re like, Hey let me question that and find a new path. And we see like tremendous good and we see generosity showing up. In lots of different forms now, which is fantastic for humanity. It also is challenging for a nonprofit who has bills to pay. And for the 10 million nonprofit workers in the U S alone that rely on that pay to pay their bills.
So you have to separate out those two things. I think
RHEA 10:00
you alluded to something that I think we could spend some time on. So what we know is that. Consumer behavior has changed dramatically in the last, certainly 10 years, but even last five, right? So with the rise of, digital commerce, Amazon, et cetera, we, the way that we buy is mirrored by the way that we give.
And oftentimes I’ve heard a million times it’s happened to me and we’ll receive this big check from a deaf and I don’t know who this person is. Like they have not gone to the traditional channels of cultivation. And so I’m curious, so many things here, but are you seeing donor behavior mirrored or rather consumer behavior mirrored in donor behavior?
And how do we break out of these traditional norms of the engagement ladder and cultivation cycles, right? Because I just don’t think it’s relevant anymore. Like I don’t see your average donor Going through the coffees and the site visits before deciding to make a gift.
NATHAN 10:55
Yeah. This is such a big area to focus on.
And we actually start out our book in a fairly dystopian way. And frankly, I wanted it to be even more dystopian than it turned out. But again, Don invited to a lot of dinner parties. So I would say the changes in consumer behavior are a lot driven by AI, to be honest. So essentially when.
Private sector organizations really figured out the connection between the heart and the wallet that, that people buy based on their values. And that is an overarching narrative that most people, more than 50 percent of people buy according to the values or will not buy products from organizations that defy their values is that the private sector took a play out of the nonprofit playbook and then essentially mastered it.
nonprofit sector always knew that the heart and the wallet very connected. And that was essentially like the gold standard of a good fundraiser. But when the private sector learned to do this and they learned to do it at scale, essentially understanding the true motivations of buying, not just because there was a product and, a price in a place that was convenient to me, but because it made me feel a certain way.
This is something that’s talked about pretty extensively by Tristan Harris at the Center for Humane Technology, this idea that, AI is a race to the bottom of the brainstem. And then, consequently, a few years later, came back and said it’s no longer a race to the bottom of the brainstem, it’s a race to intimacy.
And this is a conversation around intimacy. Not relegated to the nonprofit sector. This is specific to the for profit sector. And I remember when I heard that about two years ago, like the hair on my neck went up, I’m like, oh crap, like the playbook is wide open now all that to say, I think fundamentally.
How consumers purchase is foundationally shifted and will not go back to this very transactional like product price place and promotion, but it’s around alignment of values first and then those other things fall in line and the nonprofit sector has a lot of catching up to do. On that side the same technology exists for the nonprofit sector, but it really, we’re woefully behind in that sense.
And I think at this point have a lot to learn from the private sector and the ability to essentially understand connection at scale.
RHEA 13:00
So interesting what you say that actually the nonprofit sector had figured out first that it’s about values. It’s about connection. It’s about emotion. And yet somehow we’re lagging behind the for profit sector.
And I’m just wondering. What’s it going to take and is technology part of that? I know you’re very entrenched in questions of AI and building relationships at scale, but I’m curious, like, how can we use technology to help us connect with hearts and minds?
NATHAN 13:27
Yeah, and of course I’m biased in this.
I think humans are amazing, interesting and complicated people, but they’re not scalable on their own. And I. Tend to think and worry about the future. I think in terms of what are solutions that actually could go to scale and, technology, frankly, being one of the only things that can actually do that.
And to be honest, I’ll contradict myself a little bit is that I actually think it has to start with a mindset shift first. So one is acknowledging there’s an issue and there, because you were just at icon and we’re talking about. There is a lot of lipstick on the pig of, and a lot of, not disinformation purposely, but just whitewashing or greenwashing or what color washing it is to say, Hey, everything’s fine.
Just keep on doing these things and buy this product and it’s going to be good. And, And the reality is I don’t live in that world. I live in the world of let’s look at data and acknowledge that things are never going to be the same. And that the trajectory that we’re on doesn’t end well for anyone, humanity at large.
So I think it first starts with the mindset shift. Like we have to, as a sector have kind of this wake up call, be like, Okay, enough’s enough. We have to stop the bleeding. We have to be creative. We have to think about radical changes, not incremental changes. And then I think we dissect and think about which forms of technology can help us actually take those ideals to scale.
And They’re there because we see them every day when we wake up and, we turn off our Google alarm clock and we drive our smart cars and all the other things that we were engaged with. We know the world is so far ahead in, in the sense of like using technology to create efficiency.
And then we look at a nonprofit on the other hand, and it’s people using Excel spreadsheets. There, I think the mindset has to shift and then we have to follow and have those real conversations about actually how to do this together.
RHEA 15:11
One term that is continuing to resonate in my mind is, letting the robots robot and the humans human.
So I was just listening to the daily today about how these big tech companies have just like sketchy. Policies around using copyrighted materials to train their models. And one thing that struck me was that like by 2026 or something, the AI will be, will run out of material ingest, which is like crazy to me.
So humans actually provide the magic for the AI to ingest, to train itself. And I’m. I’m just curious, like, how do you see the tension between the technology, which is at scale, but weighed against the human touch and like the magic that is the human connection?
NATHAN 15:56
Yeah. I think that’s where it’s such an interesting, I was talking to someone about this last night who builds GPUs for very large company.
And we’re talking about the running out of training data. So let’s start with that first. So pretty much all data has already been consumed. It was admitted a week, a couple of weeks ago that opening Iowa had been using YouTube videos, which again it’s debatable. The issue is much more complicated, whether it’s copyright infringement, because essentially using data to train models is not the same as taking the data and repurposing it and selling it back.
So it’s unclear on whether any of these companies will be held liable for copyright infringement, but it does call on the question of trust, right? And then you’re using AI and it says, Hey, we’ll never use your data to retrain another model. But coming from an organization that’s being sued over copyright infringement creates a level of distrust, but the real, the reality of, I think, how the mistakes I think a lot of people have when they’re thinking about using AI or not using AI is thinking about it in.
Binary terms like good or bad, don’t think about the internet necessarily in good or bad terms. We think about it as a tool that has varying degree of use some positive and some negative, but not just, good or bad. And, I think for the most part, people need to really think about it a bit differently.
And at the end of the day. Use the things use AI. So we’ll use AI in this case, or it’s just technology in general to essentially augment things that you don’t like to do. Don’t allow it to do things that you’re inherently good at, or you like to do, allow those to be unique human characteristics.
I’m not a good writer. For me, I was talking to someone who’s a really good writer and he’s I don’t want to use AI, writing because, it’s something I enjoy. And I’m like then don’t use it for writing. Like you make that your. Your thing. At the end of the day, though, I think The fear around AI, and I know you’ve talked about this a lot on your podcast is relegated to this is going to replace my job and people are very tribal, especially about, their income and how to protect themselves.
I think we have to move beyond that and essentially look at, technology that is essentially a co pilot Microsoft’s term, right? It’s something that helps enrich your life, but create efficiency within your life. Now, what we do with that is very different. So I can use technology to offload all the things that I don’t like doing and then end up doing more of them, do more things and just fill up more space.
I don’t think that’s really good for humanity or good for any person. But if I getting back to your question, if I use technology that gives me more time to be human and I have that dividend of time, then I think it’s a really good use of technology that you and I can spend more time face to face.
Versus just doing more. And that’s the temptation, right? Everyone has to create boundaries and barriers around what more looks like as we create those efficiencies.
RHEA 18:45
That’s so interesting that you mentioned that because I was actually thinking about, I was thinking about this, like when we were all farmers, right?
Like we had eight hours of work a day, physical manual work. And now that we’re not, most of us are not farmers. We’re in this knowledge economy. We’re still spending the same amount of time, actually more. Doing work. It was that Parkinson’s law, like the amount of medical fill up to whatever container You’ve allotted.
So I think for me, it’s this question of can we actually stop value rising productivity and instead think about how does this free up my time to be a human being?
NATHAN 19:23
Yeah, think that’s the harder question. I think that’s the question that organizations incentives are different than the individuals incentive.
Organizations by vast majority will say more is better, right? If you, if look at the private sector and then we’ll look at the nonprofit private sector be like, if you can squeeze out more, Yeah. Cheaper than that’s what you should do because that drives profitability. And if you can drive profitability by doing more cheaper, you’re going to do that all day long, rinse and repeat as, but personally I receive the average person receives 333 emails a day already.
Do I want to receive 433 emails a day? No, like no one wants to receive more, but that’s the temptation. So our incentives. Individually are like, I believe less is more as a human, because I’m like, doctor automate all of your note taking with AI. So you can spend more time with me face to face, but medical office or hospital says doctors now can meet with 10 more patients a day because they’re offloading some of the mundane tasks.
So that’s truly, I think the tension. And there may be a time where maybe the nonprofit sector is the entity that basically says more is not better. In fact, less is better and we can use AI to create more space for human to human interaction, use AI for precision and creation, which is what it does really well.
But allow AI to serve humanity to its fullest extent of being more human. And we hear these philosophies a lot, and it’s much easier said than done. It takes a conscious effort by us as individuals, but also organizations to say, look. There might be things that are not unethical. I could send, 10 emails to a donor every day.
Old Navy does that to, their members or whatever their customers, but is that beneficial, to the future of philanthropy? And I think that we have to wrestle with the nonprofit sector beyond what’s ethical, but really what’s beneficial to the long term of humanity.
RHEA 21:18
As we were talking, I was just thinking, just because you can doesn’t mean you should, right? Exactly. And so I think, in the vein of let’s pound our email list with a million emails when we have a campaign or end of year appeal going out. Does that mean that you should and I think there’s also that tension of the attention economy, right?
So we know that it takes what’s like seven touch points or like I can’t remember something like absurd amount of touch points for People to actually take an action right this same time. I think it’s We’re living in a world where attention is at a premium, right? Everyone is like measuring their efficiencies and efficacies through like, how many hours of YouTube are you watching or how much are you clicking through?
And so I guess the question here is like, how do we compete in this attention economy at the same time, realizing that our asset as a sector is a Really the human experience and the emotional experience.
NATHAN 22:11
Yeah. I going back, I love that analogy of just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. I can eat cookie dough for lunch every day, but I shouldn’t.
So we inherently know as humans, like how to govern things that we can versus should this is not like a novel concept for anyone. This is literally an everyday practice. I, I think for me, since the book came out, And the biggest revelations that, and there’s been several, but one of the biggest revelations I think has been the realization for most people that they are in nonprofit, that they are no longer competing for dollars and, riffing off your, attention economy, which is if people aren’t familiar with the term need to be, because that’s essentially the economy that we’re in every algorithm that’s ever been created is essentially built to capture attention.
Yeah. And it’s only rewarded when it receives attention and then it actually gets better at creating that. So truly the most valuable commodity in the world today is attention. And I think when I’ve been able to highlight that and share that with, chief development officers and fundraisers, it’s almost this aha oh my gosh I wake up every day and my orientation is like, how do I convince or extract or whatever word we want to use money from people.
And I’m competing with either, other nonprofits for discretionary income, or I’m competing in some cases against, A for profit entity that says they’re philanthropic like Tesla. But the reality is you’re not competing against any of that. You’re literally competing for connection.
And that’s a pretty freeing thing. I guess at the end of the day, once you sit in the sense of okay, I can free myself from this idea that we’re competing for dollars. We’re competing for connection. Now, what if we evaluate all of our fundraising methodology? And actually dissect it and reverse engineer it.
What are the elements of building connections? So transparency and authenticity and vulnerability and those things that we know build connection and trust is essentially an essential element of connection. So the essence of trust is built on competency and ethics. So these are all very tangible things.
So if I do a workshop with an organization and be like, okay, let’s sit down and evaluate your processes, which of these processes highlights. The essence of competency and ethics, because we have to start at the foundation of trust to build connection. So essentially it’s like a reverse engineering, like, how do you do this and build not more donors, but better donors, people that really align with your organization and are represented with higher retention and higher lifetime value.
They’re very practical things. I think if, when I’ve done these workshops with organizations, There’s been a realization by many leaders, maybe not boards, but leaders directly saying somehow we’ve moved the needle so far toward transactional that most of our solicitation practices and stewardship practices are highly transactional.
And once you recognize that and we’re like, which of these things. Are diminishing trust, which of these things are not highlighting, our ethical principles and our ideals around, the actual connection that we’re trying to build. So all this to say is, I think these are not Revel, revelatory examples.
These are like things that we know to be true as humans, yet our organizations have, I think for many years moved so far toward the transactional that we’ve forgotten that essence of what makes up an individual that’s going to stay with you for years and years.
RHEA 25:25
I’m so glad that you said that because I think that again, there’s a tension here because what I may want to do as a human to connect, to build trust, to build a long term relationship may be in tension with the day to day realities of and I got to meet payroll and I need this campaign to go well, and I have the board breathing down my neck to be like, what are you producing?
And so how do I, as a frontline fundraiser, manage this tension of, What I might want in this sort of utopian ideal world and the realities of running a nonprofit.
NATHAN 25:57
Yeah. I think that in lies probably one of my biggest concerns is the rub between the people that want change and the people that.
Have the ability to change an organization and what I mean by that specifically is I’ve realized over this past year and a half that even at the highest levels within nonprofits, I’ll have chief development officers come to me and say I believe in all of this. I believe it’s relation. This is why I got in the business 20 years ago, and I believe that, it’s not about more.
It’s about better. But. At the end of the day, I keep my job. If I fill that leaky bucket, I keep my job. If I, because essentially boards are largely unaware that the way that they evaluate a nonprofit success, which is almost entirely dependent on how much money did you raise that they’re actually creating harm to the sector.
And there, these practices are really the reason why I think that. You less than half of Americans give to charities now. All that to say, I think you have to approach this from two different angles. One is we have to educate boards. We have to educate them that when they come to a board meeting and they look at, items one, two, and three, or how much money did you raise?
How much money did you raise? How much money did you raise? Or mainly did the money we raised exceed our expenses? And then therefore I can check the box and go home and I’ll see you in another month or next quarter that practice is what has created. A majority of transactional fundraising that if we can educate our boards that, while money is important because it does pay bills and pays employees that the number one metric of whether or not a nonprofit is healthy is represented in looking at the LTV, the lifetime value of a donor.
And is that LTV going up over time or down over time? It will show you the true health of the organization. The same is true with retention, right? So is your net retention going up over time or down over time? Again, it’s the orientate changing the orientation. So revenue first versus revenue third in that list.
And I think that’s a big part as a fundraiser, though. I really empathize with the fundraisers that have this like super deep heart in they just want to make a difference in the world and they wake up every day wanting to be successful is that, I think for them is really taking stock individually if they want to be successful individually of the practices that they’re taking every day that either lead to, transactional outcome.
Fundraising versus relational fundraising. And at the end of the day, I don’t think we ask our donors enough, we built a rubric in our book on the idea of this, what we call radical connection. I think most nonprofits and most fundraisers think of the box on the left is I know you, or, me, or, we have this kind of transactional relationship or an affiliation To a radical connection, which is I know you and you know me, I go out of my way for you. I talk about you to my friends. I smile when I talk about you and that’s a very simple rubric. If I was, I spent 20 years fundraising. If I was fundraising today, I’d love to have lunch with people and be like, where do you fall on this list?
where are we in our relationship together? Does it bring you joy? Do you tell your friends about it to your, friends and neighbors? And that can be done in a survey or it can be done one on one. I think there are practical approaches that an individual fundraiser can take today to, I think, be more in alignment with why they got into the business from the first place, but also yield much better results at the same time.
So I don’t think it’s a trade off.
RHEA 29:10
Yeah, I’m so glad that you said that I literally had a conversation just this morning with the fundraiser about Oh, I’m in relationship with this person and I don’t know where to take the relationship. I, I’d like to ask them for this and my. Feeling about this is they’re a human.
You’re a human. Tell them what journey they’re on. Cause I think so often as fundraisers, we hide the ball because we’re afraid that we’re going to get a no. So we ask for a coffee. Really we’re in our minds putting them on this cultivation journey, but they don’t know it. So it’s like talking at cross purposes that like you think we’re here, but I think we’re here and because I never asked the question, we are not on the same page.
NATHAN 29:50
Which is why going back, I think that’s where the authenticity and vulnerability come in, right? I think too often to your point, I think nonprofits nonprofit organizations hide from that and gloss over. It’s like everything is fine. And, you should be lucky to be a part of this versus.
Have those real conversations. I think that truly is the opportunity.
RHEA 30:06
I agree with you. So just one example is like the reason why your donors aren’t responding to your email invitation for coffee is they don’t trust you and they’re afraid that you’re going to spring and ask on them before they’re ready.
So why don’t we just tell people when they’re going to get a solicitation or when they’re not going to get a solicitation, like, why don’t we share the intention of like, why am I asking you for coffee?
NATHAN 30:28
Yeah. Yeah. I love that.
RHEA 30:30
And, but I do think it’s part of the ways in which we’re training everybody.
So to your point around lipstick on the pig going to icon, I definitely saw a lot of the recycled stuff that I had learned 20 years ago that frankly, didn’t really work then and definitely does now.
NATHAN 30:45
Yeah it’s a bit shocking and I think I I think where you and I had this conversation before is that I don’t believe that incremental change will actually solve or resolve the generosity crisis.
I think it will take radical change and and I’m hopeful that by Things like this podcast and, individuals like you, there’s not a lot of us that I think like ringing the bell really loudly to an annoying point right now, but we, hopefully we’re gaining traction in that of I know there’s a willingness and I know there’s desire.
I think it’s going to just take foundational shifts in our approach to really to make a sea change in the sector.
RHEA 31:21
So last question for me, because you and I could talk about this all day, but you alluded to training boards. You alluded to talking with staff about the practices of is this eroding trust or is this building trust?
What other takeaways would you recommend that folks start to do if they’re wanting to make change happen? And again, it has to be big, fast change, right? Because the for profit sector is eating our lunch.
NATHAN 31:47
It is. Yeah. And there’s a lot to learn. The reality is that there’s a lot to learn in this is saying, I’ll start with maybe a high level example.
Cause I did this in my professional careers that one is that I think again, the incentives for how fundraisers are evaluated is broken. That if you have a one year financial goal, Yeah. That, all you’re doing is essentially you’re essentially by nature. You’re not talking to people who gave to you last year because they’re not going to give it to you again, or maybe they’re in pledge, but we moved to a three year rolling average.
And it’s shocking to me that anyone I know that has moved to three year rolling average, which means that every fundraiser in the organization is evaluated based on this year, plus the last two years. So this rolling average is, allows. You to approach a donor on their terms. And so when I ask leaders or fundraisers, how many of you have asked a donor prematurely, because you had a fiscal goal that you had to hit 100 percent of hands go up.
How many of you, push the donor off into the next fiscal year because you already hit your goal and you wanted to start the next year strong, a hundred percent of the hands go up. So I think moving to three year rolling average, while. Maybe fundraisers don’t have the ability to change that in their organization.
They should instill those conversations. That is the number one most transformative thing I’ve done in my 20 years professionally. And I saw how it changed our fundraisers comfort in their work and allow them to be successful on a donor’s calendar versus the institution’s calendar. I think that’s, one really big idea.
The other is. They’re, they get a little bit smaller as we go down. I think it’s an orientation of like, how confident are you in your donor stewardship that you’d offer a money back guarantee to anyone that was not totally satisfied in how you store their donation, which I mean, it’s so simple, but honestly, it, even if you don’t do it, the mindset shift of are we so confident that we would put that on paper?
That we couldn’t return the money to an individual, but we could donate it to any other charity of their choice. If we really, what would that idea change within an organization? Like that idea of we’re so confident that you are going to be satisfied, deeply satisfied with our organization that we give you, we’ll give your money to another organization.
I think that practice essentially allows you as an organization to rethink, wow, I would a vast majority of orgs that I’ve talked to about that. Are not confident at all in, in the sense that they would offer that because, and that should be very telling, right? It should be telling that your stewardship practices and your relationship practices are highly transactional.
And then I think that the, just the most simple way, the lowest level of it doesn’t require any money is to, it goes back to what you’re just saying is ask, I would say, surveys are insanely cheap or individually, really evaluate. Individuals and don’t be afraid to ask Hey, on the scale of like you bragging about our organization to your friends and neighbors to you barely know us and you feel like it’s a one sided relationship.
Where are you? So all the way down to the most practical, like any fundraiser can do that. And they should all the way up to change how you evaluate success for your organization. And that will have a ripple effect that will pay huge dividends throughout your entire fundraising ecosystem.
RHEA 34:50
Amazing.
Actually, I, I did this thought experiment with some folks I was training and it was imagine that the donor pool that you have now is all you’re ever going to have. You are not allowed to get any new donors. Yeah. What would be different? This look of shock on their face.
NATHAN 35:07
Oh, Yeah.
RHEA 35:07
Yeah.
NATHAN 35:08
Yeah, exactly. Because you would do things differently. It’s I think that goes back to the more the idea that more is better and we’re always chasing more. And I did that for 20 years of my career. I totally acknowledge like that was not a good practice. I believe that we could just like, if we could build a better mousetrap, which is my least favorite term in the entire universe now, but those words were used like build a better mousetrap and acquire more.
We just have to dump more money on it. That is the truth. Those practices have actually are really what have, I think, eroded trust and the notion of competency within as in nonprofits overall. But I think that’s knowledge is power. Going back to where we started, knowledge is power. Now that we’re armed with the knowledge, we also, we have to be called to action and empowered to make it, to change that.
And so I remain optimistic about that.
RHEA 35:54
All right. Nathan, this is great. We could go on and on, but I also want to give you a chance to talk about fundraising AI because it’s coming up. I know it’s you and Mallory Erickson co founded it last year. It was phenomenal. Tell us a little bit about this.
I’ll make sure to put it in the show notes, but who should attend?
NATHAN 36:12
So it’s such a great resource. I, it’s something I’m prof, professionally, personally, so proud of. This year we’ll have October 1st will be the second annual global summit. Mallory and I talk every day. So to your point, like this is just just a passion project that we’re expecting 10, 000 people, anyone that is in fundraising.
If you’re a fundraiser and you’re prospect development and prospect Research your stewardship, you’re a board member and you want to know about, how AI from a promise and peril perspective can, will shape our sector. This is the place for you. And it really focuses deeply on the responsible and beneficial aspects of AI.
Essentially, really edge helping educate people. I’m really excited about this year is that we’re aiming for a fully global diverse audience in both sense of our speakers and attendees. So of the seven continents, we’re looking to have equal number of presenters from each continent.
Last year, we had 6, 000 people from 38 countries. So we’re looking to expand that to over a hundred countries this year and 10, 000 people. So I think it’s going to be an amazing community. And then the information that we gather and learn from will, will be evergreen on our website. So anyone could go to fundraising.
ai now tune into the podcast and, or download our framework or get a lot of free resources. So it’s just a, it’s an amazing grassroots effort, which you’ve been a part of. Brought so much energy to last year, which I just so appreciative of.
RHEA 37:35
h thanks for inviting me. I will be there again and it’s also free.
So there’s no excuse. Also super looking forward to that speaker from antarctica.
NATHAN 37:43
I know, I we’re on the hunt right now. This, if anyone knows anyone from Antarctica that wants to talk about fundraising, you probably have a good shot of getting on the on the docket we’re really excited and yeah, thanks Rhea.
You again, bring so much energy and creativity. I remember distinctly your hosting last year and I just thought it was fantastic. And we look forward to joining you again and really just bringing all these people together.
RHEA 38:05
Gosh, flattery will get you everywhere with me, Nathan.
NATHAN 38:07
It’s true.
RHEA 38:09
All right, friend. Thank you so much. You’ve given us a lot to chew on. This is the clarion call people. It is broken. Let’s fix it. It’ll take radical shifts in behavior practices policies, but I think that we can do it because after all, we are the sector of good feelings. We are the sector of connection and relationships and trust.
So let’s start acting like it.
NATHAN 38:30
Love it. Thanks, Rhea.
RHEA 38:32
Thanks, Nathan. Talk to you soon.
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