Meet my friend and homegirl, the amazing Rachel Bearbower. She is the Founder of Small Shop Strategies, a nonprofit consultancy focused on teaching Executive Directors how to detangle their systems so they can focus their time + energy on building relationships and raising more for their causes.
This episode is perfect for those Executive Directors and fundraisers who are neurospicy, who struggle with consistent, boring action, and who need help prioritizing tasks that drive results.
Are you awkward when you’re fundraising? So are we! We talk about the importance of being a real human and not taking things personally when you hear the word “no.”
Hear our personal experiences and mistakes in fundraising as we discuss nurturing donor relationships, managing board expectations, capitalizing on your board member’s genius, and upgrading yourself, your systems, and your software for sustainable success.
“You can create all the systems, but at the end of the day, it’s just doing the damn thing. There’s not a silver bullet. It’s the consistent reps over and over and over that are going to get you the result that you want… It’s those little things, building in those little habits that are going to help you raise that million dollars… two million… five million.” -Rachel Bearbower
Links:
https://www.smallshopstrategies.com/
Additional Resources:
10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy
The Nuclear Effect by Scott Oldford
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nonprofitlowdown/support
Episode Transcript
RHEA 0:00
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong.
Listeners. It’s Rhea Wong with you. Once again, we Nonprofit Lowdown. I am so stoked because today I’m talking to my buddy, my homegirl Rachel Bearbower. She is el queso Grande, the head cheese, the big head honcho, the presidente of small shop strategies. And today we’re gonna talk all about small shop strategies. Rachel, welcome to the show.
RACHEL 0:31
It is so good to be here and be hanging out with you and yeah, thanks for having me.
RHEA 0:38
This is gonna be fun. So before we jump into all the dets, which I know everyone is, Getting their notebooks out, or if you haven’t get your notebooks out cuz she’s gonna drop some value bombs.
How did you get to this point of wanting to help small shop thrive? Because I know you and I have very similar stories of uh, being recovering ED’s.
RACHEL 0:57
Definitely a recovering ED. I think you’re in that club for life. But I actually was on a track to be in finance.
I worked in Boston. I was studying to take my series seven, like I was gonna be a financial advisor. Wear my power suit is gonna be great. And I quit my job in a meeting. And didn’t have a plan. So I ended up moving back to my hometown and in the midst of all of that, I had found an organization.
I was like, this nonprofit thing is kinda cool. I like to help people. And I said, those famous last words of is it really that hard to start a nonprofit? And so then I did.
RHEA 1:37
Have you ever heard of the Kruger Dunning effect?
No. There’s this phenomenon called the Kruger Dunning Effect. Where basically you are so overly confident because you just have no idea like the depth of your lack of knowledge.
RACHEL 1:51
If we look that up on Wikipedia, my face is there. But through that , I really just ran my organization on instinct, which I definitely don’t recommend, but I didn’t suck at it and I really just tried all these different things and I was just so committed.
I was like, okay, let’s do this. So once you go through this process, then the best way to. Transfer that knowledge. I’m a big believer of teach everything that you know, so I’m teaching what I know, which is small shops and how hard it is and the strategies to make it easier.
RHEA 2:20
I talk about this all the time. My first day on the job as a 26 year old ED, I did two Google searches, Google search. One was, what does an ED do? Google Search two was how do you fundraise? So unfortunately our sector is one where people learn trial by fire.
Okay, let’s get into it. So when you say small shop, what do you mean? Because I know there are different definitions of what small is. I actually spoke to someone the other day at a 5 million worth. Like we’re small and I. Relative to what? Relative to like unicef? Sure. So what do you mean by “small shop”?
RACHEL 2:49
Okay, so I, Rachel from small shop strategies, I define a small shop as under 3 million in revenue and typically less than 10 employees. Now there’s an asterisk to that. Really where. I find myself and the organizations that I am working with are typically in the 250,000 to 750,000 to a million operating budget.
So under that 1 million is really where I seem to find myself working with most small shops.
RHEA 3:20
You and I serve very similar type folks, and one thing that I’ve noticed, and I just wonder if you’ve noticed it as well, is that organizations that tend to be bigger, let’s say the seven figures, but are predominantly federal grant or state grant funded realistically in an organizational sense, are much younger, even though their budgets are much bigger.
Do you find that?
RACHEL 3:41
[00:03:41] Rachel Bearbower: that. Yeah. I think it’s also a mindset I’ve had organizations that are $50,000 in revenue who have invested $20,000 in services to learn and grow and. Scale and then I’ve had million dollar organizations be like, so this is $97. What am I going to get?
I have a hundred pound Husky. And he truly believes that he is a lap dog. Like he is committed to that role. He’s huge.
And I think that goes with organizations If you believe in what you’re doing and you can see the investment, then you’re going to invest. But if you’re in that scarcity mindset, then like you’re like, Ooh, $97, not in the budget.
RHEA 4:24
I’m so glad that you said that because I 110000000% agree.
I didn’t really see real growth in my nonprofit until I invested in my own skills. I spent probably like $20,000 in professional development to learn how to fundraise properly, how to do accounting, you have to invest in the brain if you want to grow. And so I could not.
Underscore that more. And if you’re the kind of leader who is sweating $97 for something that could potentially bring in a hundred times that, then I think you as a leader really need to reset your mind as to what your priorities truly are.
RACHEL 5:01
you have to look at what that investment is going to do. I think about this with organizations sending emails. I literally was just talking to an organization who was like, yeah we’re really nervous about sending emails because, we don’t wanna over email people, yada, yada y we’ve all heard this.
The thing is though, they’re sending like maybe an email a month, and I was like oh no. You don’t get what you want unless you ask for it and you invest in it and you put time and energy and do the reps and that’s how organizations grow. When I was saying how I define a small shop, typically my organizations start in that $250,000 range.
But I have several organizations that have been with me for a while that are now skyrocketing because they’ve been investing in themselves.
RHEA 5:43
Oh, it’s so important so my fundraising accelerator, which is not an inexpensive program, but I know the people who are ready to invest are the ones who are going to do the work.
And so the ones who do the work regularly see six and seven figures get added to their bottom line budget because to your point, like there’s some experimentation, but you have to be willing to try stuff and do the work over and over consistently showing up.
RACHEL 6:05
I was talking to somebody about this idea that, when organizations are funded,
we fund for a year. The number of mistakes that I have made in the last 12 months alone? We aren’t setting up our sector in a way to allow for organizations to make mistakes, to try new things, to experiment. They just, they feel like right outta the gate they have to be perfect because every single dollar is the last dollar they’re going get. Fund them for five years so that they can make a whole lot of mistakes and make a lot of good at the same time.
RHEA 6:35
You are preaching to the choir friend.
I think if we actually had a philanthropic sector that took the idea of more kind of a venture philanthropy approach, which is we’re gonna invest and we’re gonna invest in the jockey, not the horse, and we’re going to invest multi-year so that you can try some stuff. Because the thing is, if we’re on this 12 month turnaround, You’re not gonna try stuff because you’re like, my funding might be at risk.
So you don’t take any risks, you don’t get the big rewards. Anyway, that is a whole other podcast. But yes, I, last thing I’ll say though is I think that’s why nonprofits really have to look at major donor giving, individual unrestricted giving, to give themselves a little bit of that runway to experiment and to grow and to test out new ideas.
RACHEL 7:17
And I think it’s an opportunity to have conversations with some really cool donors to say listen here’s the goal. I don’t have every single answer. Cause there’s not a blueprint for how to solve this problem. And you find the right donor, the right major donor, right individual donors that like figure it out mentality.
You got it made, but you also have to be. Upfront and honest of this is what we’re trying to solve, but we don’t quite have a straight and narrow path . This path is gonna be a little windy.
RHEA 7:45
I think that there’s also the opportunity too, to engage people as thought partners.
So let’s say you’re talking to somebody who is an entrepreneur and you’re like, Hey, we don’t know how to do this thing exactly, but we’re gonna try a bunch of stuff. Any entrepreneurial person will. Jump at the chance to help you think through it. That’s fun for them. Entrepreneurs like to solve problems.
RACHEL 8:03
Absolutely. And the answer’s always in the room. Yeah. So that, entrepreneurial minded donor might have some really great ideas of things that you can do or believe in investing in your infrastructure, in your systems, in the foundation of your organization because they know how important that is in their business or in businesses that they work with.
RHEA 8:25
This is a nice segue. The one mistake, I make many mistakes, but one of the biggest mistakes I think I made as I was growing is I’m not by nature a process person. I’m not, a check the box
I get stuff done. It’s all in my head. I I have my own organizational system. I’m not really great at documentation, workflows, organizing my Dropbox, which was a disaster. So tell me a little bit about the role of organization, processes, workflows, et cetera, on the backend, if you’re thinking about growth.
RACHEL 8:57
Okay. I’m gonna drop a huge revelation here . I’m not that organized or like process oriented or have everything neat and tidy either and I’m with you. So that was a big mistake I made as an ED is I kept so much in my head. I felt like even when I was trying to. Pass something off or delegate, and I still find myself doing this is I have it all in my head and I feel like I have to create this beautiful package I have to create the SOP and all these lists and give the loom video to pass something off.
Yet I have very talented and smart people who are smarter than me, who I just need to be like, I need you to do this thing. And they’re gonna figure it When it comes to your backend there does need to be some sort of structure, some sort of system. And I say this again, my asterisk it’s going to look different for everyone because everyone works different.
Everyone thinks different, has different skill sets, has different zones of genius. And we’re going to be comfortable in a different way. Ok. Let’s just put that over the top of this entire conversation. What works for me might not work for you, but having something is going to make you more successful.
I have four systems that you gotta have. We’ve got your operational system. That’s like your Google Drive, your Dropbox, your, the place where you store all the things. It’s gotta be in one place. Then you have your project management system.
That system is how you get stuff done and you move through your workflow. So whether that is how do you approach a new donor? How do you launch a year end campaign? How do you set up an event? That’s where all those processes live. Then we have your calendar management system.
That’s where you’re scheduling meetings, divvying up your time. those three systems, your operations, your project management and your calendar management, those are all tech based. We have one more and that is your executive function.
That is how you get you the human behind the work to get the done. Because at the end of day you can have a beautiful project management system with like color coding. But if you, the human can’t get it done, it’s never gonna get done. So we gotta figure out how to get these tech and analog systems to work in harmony.
RHEA 11:10
That’s so funny you said that cuz I would go to these phases where I was like, I’m gonna get super organized right now. I would spend like hours setting up a beautiful system. I’ve tried them all. Asana, Trello Evernote, right? And I was like, yes.
Like I just read, getting things done with David Allen. I’m gonna set up my whole system and then like in, two weeks basically I was back to the old way.
RACHEL 11:31
Bravo for making it two weeks.
RHEA 11:34
God. No, I would get like super psyched. I was like, yes, I’m gonna tag everything.
It’s gonna be like, amazing. But how do you get the human, because, basically you’re fighting against inertia, you’re fighting against habit. And I would assume for all of us, but for someone like myself, it’s so easy to just go back to the thing that I’m used to doing.
RACHEL 11:49
Totally. And I think there’s there’s value in both. There’s this technology that’s out there to make our life better, to make things easier, to track our time. So technology can be a huge asset but there’s habits and analog system that you have figure out for yourself that works for you, and then out how to find synergy between the two of them.
I am very much a pen to paper type of person, like I gotta write something down. For those of you out there who are also my analog friends who have your paper calendar, have your to-do list, that’s okay. It’s actually great because I remember when I learned this stat, but you are 40% more likely to complete a task when you write it down.
Having your pen and paper is totally okay. I have this thing I call the sunup and sundown routine. When you sit down at your desk, you open up the systems operations calendar and project management systems, and you take a look at your day what does that look like?
What am I doing? And you take that and you download it. Onto your to-do list, onto your paper. Then you work from that paper and then at the end of the day, your sundown routine is transferring that knowledge, transferring all the post-it notes that you have, all the notes that you have in your notebook, back into those systems.
Especially when you work with teams, your teams gotta know what you did every day or like the donors that you called. And so by having a simple sunup and sundown routine so that you’re downloading the information and then uploading the information at the end of the day.
That is how you can start to make this analog and tech operational systems start to work together.
RHEA 13:24
Rachel, I love that it, and it sounds so simple and easy to do, and really it’s just about habit forming, right? Like it’s just get into the habit of doing it. All right. Lemme switch tax because this is the number one question I get, especially with small shops.
“Rhea, I really want to be spending more of my time fundraising”, and I’m talking primarily about eds. ” I just don’t have the time and I don’t have a development staff”, which I imagine is true for 99% of the small shops you work with. Yep. What do we do about that?
RACHEL 13:51
You gotta make the time. What are you doing?
You gotta, take a look at that. Rhea and I are definitely both obsessed with a book called 10 X is easier than two X.
RHEA 14:01
it’s my Bible. I love it so much. Everyone should read it.
RACHEL 14:04
I love it. But, ok. There’s a couple of themes that in reading that have really risen to the top for me, especially when it comes to eds and it’s focusing on the top 20% that is going to move the needle.
Think of the Eisenhower Matrix. If you don’t know what the Eisenhower Matrix is. Google it. It basically is a way to prioritize what you’re doing. Taking every single thing that you are doing and putting that into the Eisenhower matrix or prioritizing it and if you are like, oh, everything’s a priority.
It’s not, and now start breaking that list down into what is going to move the needle in my organization? Maybe it’s setting up an email workflow so that as you’re bringing all these donors in, they feel super nurtured.
So maybe it’s investing time in building a system so that when people come into your sphere, They feel nurtured. They’re in, they’re getting emails. They’re , know that we know that they’re alive.
And then the other thing that is they have executive directors who are trying to do all the things, and you can’t be an expert at everything, nor should you.
And so if you need to spend more time fundraising, but you’re so busy doing X, Y, Z. Who are the people? Who are the volunteers? Who are the board members that you can say, okay, board member, you’re doing X Volunteer, you’re doing Y. And hey, consultant, who’s really good at this really specific thing, I’m gonna pay you to do Z and get it done right, and make my life look a lot easier.
RHEA 15:33
Double click on all the things. Let’s talk about time and time again, because I work with primarily eds who are major gift focused.
When they’re not getting enough prospects in the door, when they’re not raising the money they need to raise. A lot of times their responses we’ll just hire a development director. talk to me about why that might be a flawed strategy and what you need to consider before hiring a development director.
RACHEL 15:58
You gotta go back to why isn’t this working for you? Do you not have enough time? Do you have too many donors? Are you not building, individual relationships? Are your donors all over the country? And so to go meet with donors, you have to get on an airplane.
And that takes up a ton of time. What is the thing that is missing from the equation for you? And instead immediately going to I’ve gotta hire someone. Do you and is it a development person or is it a database person or is it somebody who can schedule all of your appointments for you?
Getting really specific into what is taking up the most amount of your time. And again, that goes back to knowing what you’re doing, to realizing what the top 20% is so you can focus on that I know there’s a lot of development people who listen to this, so please know that I think you humans are the most amazing people, but sometimes our development people are forced to be these jack of all trades as well, and we aren’t letting our development directors go and do the thing they need to do because they have to do a whole bunch of other crap.
RHEA 16:56
We alluded to this before we started recording, which is when you throw a development person, which by the way, development writers are expensive, right? So that’s huge.
FTE numbers. Less benefits, right? So we’re talking six figures. If you’re throwing an f t e at a problem when you actually haven’t taken a look at what the problem is, like maybe the problem is your database isn’t. Up to snuff. Maybe your contact information’s all the place. Maybe you don’t have a strategy for retaining donors.
I find that’s a big thing, right? Maybe you have an ED who actually does not want to or know how to fundraise, maybe your board isn’t engagement fund. There are so many potential things that you can do to diagnose the problem first.
And the other thing is, I wanna say to your point, if you go through the. Trouble of hiring someone without cleaning house first. Essentially, they become a very highly paid admin. you don’t want them to be spending time cleaning your database. What you want them to be doing is out there talking to donors and getting more donors in the door, but they can’t do that if the house is dirty.
I’ll get off my soapbox, but I have feelings about that.
RACHEL 17:51
Your feelings are valid and.
I imagine there’s a lot of people listening who are like, cool, Rachel and Rhea. We don’t have the money to hire anyone, and I’ve gotta do the thing. So I get that. I’ve been in that position, I think when I started teaching, what I knew was because I was really good at figuring out systems to maximize my time.
For the most bang for my buck. Ideal world scenario is you have the 10 most perfect donors that you can just nurture and you can take out to coffee, you can text with them. They give money. When they say they’re gonna give money, they give the exact amount you need to cover all of your operating costs.
RHEA 18:34
I wanna live in that world, Rachel.
RACHEL 18:35
I do too. I really do. And we do not live in that world actually. If you’re an organization that lives in that world, please, I wanna know what it’s like. Call us. What is important to start thinking about is, okay, I can focus on these 10 donors.
I think it’s also important to prioritize your donors because the top 10 aren’t necessarily the top givers. They might be, but they aren’t necessarily. But figure out your 10. Ok. The rest of your donors, the individual givers, the ones that like are giving monthly. We have tech and we have automation, and we have systems out there
to be able to nurture those relationships without having those one-to-one interactions or those one-to-one relationships, because that’s just not possible. But you also probably have, however many donors that you still need to connect with. And so part of being a really good fundraiser is looking at the whole picture .
Start with figuring out one system if that is automating.
The receipt letter and then sending a second email when somebody gives a gift. Great focus on that. Start there.
RHEA 19:40
Yeah. Two things that occurred to me as you were talking is, number one, really think about the word upgrade. You’re upgrading your board. Your staff, your systems and it’s a constant, right?
Because what got you here won’t get you there, right? And so as leaders, we constantly need to be thinking about, the top 10%, not just the top 10% from donors, our top 10% board members, staff performers, tech that we’re using and constantly cutting the bottom and upgrading to the top
I think when you’re so in the weeds, it’s hard to get that 360 view, but you have to make the time to do it. And then the second thing that you said I was reading this great book of called The Nuclear Effect, and he was talking about billionaires and he is a lot of billionaires have built their money on the back of something really boring
and so I think as Eds we’re constantly trying to like, oh, what’s the new idea? Especially if you’re a founder, you have that visionary entrepreneurial energy. I have it too. I have new shiny object syndrome. It’s bad. But you just have to consistently show up and do the boring work over and over again.
You gotta get the reps in order to know how to optimize, because if you’re changing the system or changing the way that you do whatever, every five seconds, you’re never gonna get a sense of what’s actually working, because you’re just constantly trying new things. So I think there’s a place for innovation, but I think you also be really disciplined to continuously, consistently do the thing over and over again.
RACHEL 21:00
James Clear, says you are the sum of all of your daily habits. When I was able to start driving, I set up a cone and I learned how to parallel park and I practiced parallel parking like it was my job. And you know what?
I can parallel park literally anywhere with a crowd of people in front of me. Tight space. I got this.
RHEA 21:23
You’re my hero.
RACHEL 21:25
It it makes my heart happy. The other thing that we don’t talk about. I think sometimes in our organizations we’re like, oh, we just invested so much time and energy and everything into this.
RHEA 21:35
Yeah, we chase the sunk cost. Yeah. Everybody threw so much money at it. I can’t give up on it.
But then at some point you’re just throwing good money after bad.
RACHEL 21:45
Exactly. And so that goes for, that board member that sucks. Yeah they’ve been here, they’re still here. Maybe it’s time to have a conversation to ask them to leave because they are not actually adding any value.
Maybe it’s upgrading your donor management system so it’s being able to walk away from something, even though it’s scary, knowing that there is a better end result out there.
RHEA 22:10
So good. And that’s, so 10 x is easier than two x, which you have to let go of the things that are keeping you in the the two X world.
And a lot of times that’s the 80% of stuff that you’ve been doing that’s gotten you to this point. But if you want 10 x growth, 10 x mindset, you have to let go of this stuff that is not contributing to your 10 x.
RACHEL 22:30
I wanna go back to the question about what are some things that the fundraisers can do
Picking up the phone’s, meeting with donors, it’s cold calling. It’s just doing the damn thing. There’s not a silver bullet, it’s. Reps over and over that are going to get you the result that you want.
Everything I do from here on out is in service to the vision.
RHEA 22:52
I love that. I’ve been thinking a lot about the notion of decide and commit.
So decide the side comes from the Latin root for death. It’s like homicide, suicide, right? To decide means to put to death all other options. So when you decide, you put to death all other options, and then you commit.
So often when things are not going the way that we want, it’s cuz we haven’t fully committed to it, decide and commit. That’s how you get to growth. I wanna talk about reps too, cuz I think the thing that I see a lot of with the folks I work with is that they’re very reluctant to pick up the phone and talk to people cuz they’re afraid of screwing up.
They’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. Here’s the thing. At some point, you will screw it up. Like at some point you will say the wrong thing, but you keep it moving and you keep going. And if it’s really something that you want to get better at, there are ways to do it. You can role play with your board, you can ask for feedback, you can role play with your staff,
so again, it’s just the reps. People wonder how to become a better fundraiser. No one’s necessarily born being a natural fundraiser. You just have to practice doing it.
The more asks you put out, the more nos you’re gonna get, but the more yeses you’re gonna get. So if you put out a lot asks, you’re gonna get more yeses.
RACHEL 24:03
Our brains naturally go towards the negative. You might have nine yeses, one no.
We focus then on that one instead of focusing on the other nine that you’re like, heck yeah, I got those nine. I have done a lot of fundraising over the last 20 years.
So I’ve had a lot of opportunities to really suck at fundraising.
RHEA 24:24
I remember. The first couple of times I went on foundation visits and I was 26 years old.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know that you had to have a formal presentation and the packet, I just showed up and I was like, hi, actually I think it really worked in my favor because they were like, look at this poor, clueless girl.
I’m not saying go in unprepared, but go in with a sense of authenticity of look, this is who I am, this is what I’m about, but I’m also like super clear in what I’m trying to achieve and I wanna invite you on this journey with me.
And I also just wanna underscore here that so often when we go into asks and it doesn’t go the way that we want, there’s such a strong tendency to tell ourselves a story about what that meant about me, it’s really about your internal narrative.
There’s a tendency to really catastrophize and tell yourself all sorts of crazy stories. And make yourself feel bad. So use your big, beautiful brain to not torture yourself.
I always love the phrase, yeah, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Don’t suffer. Like not everyone is gonna be your person. Not everyone is gonna say yes to you. I feel like so often the reason why fundraisers burn out is they just internalize all this stuff and they make it mean something about who they are as people or their worth as a human being.
RACHEL 25:41
And there’s also this idea that you are the only thing in their world. I’ll go back to my email example. We get caught up that oh, I don’t wanna over email people because they’re busy. Yeah, people are busy. So the more emails that you send, the more that you’re staying top of mind.
RHEA 25:55
Alright, last question for me cuz we could go in forever and ever.
Yes. Let’s talk about boards because do you think that there’s a way that small shops use boards differently than bigger shops? And if so, how?
RACHEL 26:05
I think small shops use their boards as committee members. And especially when you are starting out, your board members are very much a working board.
When an ED is really looking to grow and scale really needs to know when that needs to shift. And sometimes that also means that the board members that have been on your board as a working board are no longer the right board members to be on your board to become more of a governing board or a fundraising board or whatever goal you’re trying to do.
But also what is your board member’s superpower? What are they really good at?
I think the biggest thing with smaller organizations, is to know when it’s time to shift from that working board to more of a fundraising governing like that.
RHEA 26:49
What are the signs, how, like how do we know when?
RACHEL 26:51
I used to treat my committees as future positions. So I had to development committee because I eventually wanted to develop in person. I had committee cause I wanted a program person. I’m such like a woo person, I would be like, it’s a gut feeling. I’m sure there’s some signs.
I think it’s when you hit like a certain threshold of your able to start Like investing in the people who can do the work that the board was originally doing. That’s probably the biggest implication.
RHEA 27:17
For me it’s that, and then It’s also are you bringing in the money that you need?
So if you need more networks, introductions to foundations, that higher level of connection in order to get the resources in the door, that to me is a clear sign that you need to start upgrading the board.
The other thing is, and I can’t underscore this enough before you go on a big donor acquisition make sure you plug your leaky bucket. Look at your donor retention. Oh my gosh, yes. So if you’re not retaining your donors at least 70% year over year, you got some problems on your retention end.
Fix that before you go find a bunch of new donors. And I find nine times outta 10. The reason why people are like, I need more donor prospects. It’s cuz you burned all of the ones that you’ve had.
RACHEL 28:06
I have a donor roadmap that I created that basically lays out, a timeline of when you acquire a new donor and here are the things to do. But the most important piece of that is we spend so much time in the acquisition and we don’t spend time in the retention. And it starts when that donor hits the donate They have dopamine. They are like so excited. They hit that donate button and the buyer’s remorse comes in the doubt and the dread and the fear because they don’t know if the gift that they just made, if you’re gonna do what you said you were gonna do with it.
On the organization side, we see that gift come in and we’re celebrating. We’re like, this is awesome. This is great. We check the box, we got a new donor. Fantastic. So the organization’s job is to meet the donor where they’re at when they make that first gift.
Quickly, get them a thank you, send a quick email. If you can’t get a handwritten thank you, note out in 24 hours, which who can, who has the time for that?
On Fridays, write all your thank you notes, get ’em in the mail . Donor retention starts with that first moment and it’s less about, this sounds terrible, it’s less about the quality. It’s so important to be quality, but it’s also, it’s a lot about the speed and meeting that donor where they’re at with their excitement and being excited that they’re now part of.
RHEA 29:30
Yeah. Oh, so good cuz they’re so right. The minute you hit the donate bar you’re like, oh no. Is that a bad idea? And it’s different than going to Whole Foods and handing over $20 for a peanut. Cause they’re like, I got the peanut It’s Whole Foods, so it’s like one peanut, but at least I have the peanut.
Last question. I know I keep saying last question, but really legit last question. In your opinion, I have an opinion, but in your opinion for a small shop ed, what percentage of their time should they be spending on fund fundraising?
RACHEL 29:58
60, 70% like yes.
it’s gotta be the bulk of your time. Yes. And that can be done if you’re a systems thinker and set up systems to take your mind off of Ooh, did I get that email out? Ooh, did I create a list? And remembering that. It’s that, going back to that who, not how okay, I have a ton of program stuff that I have to do, who can I lean on to support me with that? But
everything also happens in season.
You’re donors, they’re planning their vacations. Their kids are also out of school. They are not as plugged in as they were maybe two months ago, or they will be in October. So use this season of downtime instead of trying to hit the pavement and feeling terrible about yourself because nobody wants to meet with you think about investing.
The systems and the workflows and everything that’s going to make your life easier come year, end. Maybe start writing some of your appeals. Maybe start planning, every season has its place and it has its reasons.
RHEA 31:15
And again I’m not trying to beat up on my ed people.
But when I hear Eds of small shops say that, I’m like what do you do with your time? If you’re not spending 65 to 80% of your time, in my opinion, you’re not doing your job. But they’ll say things to me like strategy, and I’m like, I don’t know what that means.
You know what that means? It means you’re sitting in your office answering emails because you’re afraid to talk to people. That’s what that means. So know that. Yeah. And be real with yourself about okay, if I’m afraid of talking to donors, there are options. You can talk to Rachel, you can talk to me.
There are people out in the world who can help you get over that hump so that you can be effective in your job. So with that, Rachel, this has been so fun. I’m gonna make sure that your info is in the show notes. Who are your people if. I’m listening to this. I’m like, Rachel, am I the kind of person that you work with?
Who are your people?
RACHEL 32:04
My people are small shop executive directors. I do have a membership where you can come hang out. We do some cool stuff. I am also a systems thinker. I am somebody who really believes in the power of your operational systems, your technology. And having all of that work together so that you can work a lot smarter and more efficiently inside of your small shop.
And so that can happen in a few different ways, come hang out with me on Instagram or on LinkedIn, shoot me a message. Small shops I’m here for you. I wanna make your life easier.
RHEA 32:38
Yes girl, I want you to make their lives here too cuz you know what, this is a tough job.
So I also just wanna shout out to my folks and all my small shop eds. I know it feels like we beat up on you a little bit, but we love you. We are you, we wanna help you and we want you to learn from the mistakes that we all made. Yeah, with that, that’s Rachel
I feel should make book of all the mistakes that we made. That would be a great book.
RACHEL 33:00
Very long book. Very long book.
RHEA 33:02
Alright friend, thank you so much. Always good to see you. I’ll make sure your info’s in the show notes. Folks, get in touch with Rachel and if you like this podcast, please like and share on Apple or wherever you get your podcast.
It really helps. Thanks so much. Have a great day everyone.
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