Join me and one of my favorite repeat guests Greg Warner, CEO of Marketsmart. In this episode, we unpack so much of what is wrong with so-called “best practices” in fundraising and why administrators make fundraisers’ lives so difficult. We talk about ways to talk with donors when they are ready and have indicated their willingness to talk to us and how to structure investment-level conversations. Get your pens out to take some serious notes.
To connect with Greg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregmarketsmart/
To download Greg’s invitation samples, visit: https://go.rheawong.com/invitation
QUOTE from Greg “When thinking about a cause, the area of the brain that lights up is the same one when we think about family or love.”
Episode Transcript
RHEA WONG 00:00
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 is a repeat guest, my friend Greg Warner, CEO and founder of Marketsmart and we have a lot to talk about. We’re going to talk about why major donor processes are stuck, and what to do about it instead. So Greg, welcome to the show again.
GREG WARNER 00:23
Thank you. Thanks for having me. Wow! Not many people invite me back twice.
RHEA WONG 00:30
You know, call me a glutton for punishment. Just kidding! All right, before we jump into this, can you give us a quick overview of your history in fundraising, which is actually quite non-traditional, which I think is a really interesting path?
GREG WARNER 00:45
Yeah, sure! I’m really a donor first. I was running a marketing agency. And the more successful it became, the more I began to give money away. And I found that I actually liked it. But sort of the afterglow of that experience was not as good as the giving experience.
GREG WARNER 01:10
So I offered to help one of my favorite charities that kept pelting me with a lot of junk mail and selling my name to their competitors and stuff. And we devised a system, if you will, for helping them inspire the wealthiest and most passionate donors to lean in and self-qualify, which was totally different than what the sector usually does, still, which is a lot of targeting and prospect identification, not enough qualification.
GREG WARNER 01:45
So anyway, this system worked really, really well. And we got referred to another similar cause from that original cause. And then I decided to just kind of kill the old business, and turn it into a software and service business that only helps charities.
GREG WARNER 02:02
So now let’s see, 12 years, 13 years later, we’re still kicking it, we’ve got hundreds of customers, the system works, and mostly because it’s very donor-centric. But what we’ll probably be talking about next is the aspect that needs to be fundraiser-centric.
RHEA WONG 02:22
And I want to talk about self-cultivation and self-solicitation because I think in the traditional ways that fundraisers are taught, it’s like, you identify them, and then you have to do stuff to them in order to get them to a point where they’re going to give a gift. And you and I spoke about this because that’s just not the way that people operate it, particularly now.
RHEA WONG 02:46
I mean, when I think about my own consumer behavior, I don’t want to talk to anybody. If I talk to anybody, it’s at a point where I’ve already done my research. And I’ve decided perhaps, that I might have some questions before I buy. So talk to me a little bit about is this reflected in the way that you’ve seen donors interact.
GREG WARNER 03:04
Yeah, without a doubt. So let’s take out the fact that people are donors, or buyers, or anything like that. And let’s just get into some behavioral science and some research, which I’ll share with you. And this goes back to, by the way, I learned this at the ripe old age of 22. I think it was because I made it through college, but I didn’t love the learning aspect of college.
GREG WARNER 03:35
I failed out of business school. Because they told me I wasn’t going to be good at business clearly, you know, so it shows what they know. But when I meandered my way through to other majors and I graduated, I was pretty lost. And I realized that I should just get into sales. I thought I could be good at sales. And I’d been doing it since I was a kid.
GREG WARNER 04:01
Anyway, my dad gave me a book. It’s got the worst name. I didn’t even run a read it because I thought it sounded terrible. It’s called SPIN Selling. And this book was written by a guy named Neil Rackham. And he studied 35,000 sales interactions to determine what the hell makes the top 10% of salespeople outperform all the others exponentially.
GREG WARNER 04:34
And he figured it out. And I’m so glad I read that book so early in my career. And I’m just telling you, and you don’t have to read the whole book. And if anybody ever wants a synopsis of it, just ask me or Google a synopsis of it, because it’s very heavy with a lot of research. It’s hard to understand. You have to read it two or three times to get it.
GREG WARNER 04:55
But what he really found is that salespeople are not manipulators or influencers. The best salespeople and this translates into fundraising, are the ones that take a particular interest in the individual whom they’re working with. And they ask questions, much like a psychologist, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or CPA, to help people come to conclusions that are right for them. Now, Dr. Russell James, if anybody on here knows of him, and he’s an amazing researcher in this sector.
GREG WARNER 05:41
He calls it Socratic fundraising. Behavioral science is clear and sound. In that, it’s questions that generate results. It’s not presentations, persuasions, manipulations, or the short way that I love to invent terms for the sector, but I call them driven by solicitations or ambush asks, which is what most administrators, sadly, I have found, drive too many staff to do.
GREG WARNER 06:19
And that kind of behavior is driving people away. And I know there’s a lot of talk about donor-advised funds and family foundations, and we even want to change laws in relation to that. But, you know, if you keep taking a hammer and hammering your donors in the face with dry by solicitations, and ambush ag asks, and I know that’s the New Jersey in me coming out.
GREG WARNER 06:49
I am very visceral in my beliefs about this. But if you keep taking a hammer and whacking them with these kinds of behaviors, the only people who are going to be happy in this world are the administrators, but they’ll be out of a job eventually because the revenue won’t be coming in.
GREG WARNER 07:07
And what the donors do, rightfully so, is they find a better value proposition in giving money to family foundations and donor-advised funds. They can maintain their anonymity. They can enjoy it. And this is the afterglow I was talking about that I was unhappy with. Well, this is happening in massive quantities, and people are seeing the revenue and they’re upset about it.
GREG WARNER 07:36
But they’re blaming the donors and the banks. It’s the thing you can do because it’s not their fault. If you provide a better value proposition and a donor experience, that’s worth a million dollars. The donor will not be able to help themselves but to trip over themselves to give the money to your cause. And cry tears of joy for having been given the opportunity to do it with you.
RHEA WONG 08:10
And I go back, there’s so much to unpack. But I just wanted to go back to this idea of questions being the weigh-in to the relationship into the conversation. And you know, as fundraisers were taught to listen for the get read, listen for that. But the problem is that we’re also not taught how to listen.
RHEA WONG 08:32
And so I talked about this a lot that there are really three levels of listening. The first level of listening, which, unfortunately, is how a lot of us operate is listening with an agenda. I’m listening, to hear what I want to hear to manipulate the situation. The second level of listening is listening with no agenda.
RHEA WONG 08:49
And the third level is listening for what’s not being said. That’s when you’re listening for tones. It’s when you’re listening for body language. You’re sensing the energy. I think, when we put the stories and the needs of the donor ahead of our own agenda, was that when we see the transformation?
GREG WARNER 09:11
I’m taking a deep breath because, and please don’t take this the wrong way, or you can, I don’t give a shit. All that gets in the way of humanity. We need to ask questions because we’re human. And that we recognize that the other person we’re talking to is a human being. So you have to have a degree of, you have to have the desire to understand the humanity of that individual, and especially their original identity in their life story.
GREG WARNER 09:51
So let me say it like this, I’ve done a lot of work personally on what is the meaning of life or how you determine the meaning of life right. Now, I’m gonna get very philosophical here. But the reason is very important because the biggest gifts, the most consequential decisions for givers, and the most transformative donations to any organization happen, not for any transactional or reciprocal reason, but because someone is trying to find meaning in their life.
GREG WARNER 10:25
Okay! That’s heavy. So if you’re going to be involved in helping someone with wealth, find meaning in their life, you have to understand that one of the big components of finding meaning in life is that everybody wants to tell themselves the hero story. We all walk around, wanting to tell ourselves that I’m a good father. I’m a good friend. I am a good son. I’m a good CEO.
GREG WARNER 11:00
That’s our calibrator. There are other components to finding meaning in life, like belonging, spirituality and having a sense of purpose. But the hero narrative is very important when it comes to this giving decision and I’m for the donor. So if that’s so important that they can only find meaning in life you’re giving or that’s a component of how they’re going to find meaning in their life, then the next question is, who’s going to help them do that?
GREG WARNER 11:41
Okay? Because wealthy people don’t sit around thinking about how to give away their money. So they find meaning in life all the time. But as I just kind of explained, that’s what’s going on. They have this deep desire in their humanity to live on in the minds of others, or even if they’re giving anonymously, they know, I’m a good person. That’s my hero narrative.
GREG WARNER 12:08
I don’t have to tell anybody, but myself, and I feel like I have meaning in my life because I know this. So what that means? If that’s the case, and we know that. That’s why we see philanthropists, giving away all the money that they earned all over their life, and all the trials and everything, the blood, sweat, and tears, they went through to acquire that. And I know because I’m a CEO, and entrepreneur, who’s still putting my house on the line to keep this company growing because I don’t want to take private equity money.
GREG WARNER 12:43
I don’t like that stuff. Anyway, most wealthy people are first-generation wealthy. They are not dynastic. Like they’re made out to look like and they’re not evil like they’re made out to be in the movies and Disney movies especially, you know, the rich person is always evil. No! They’re not evil. They’re trying to find meaning in their life after they’ve accomplished so much and acquired so much, and they want to actually give it away, and then they’ll cry tears of joy doing it.
GREG WARNER 13:16
And we’ve all seen that. But what they need, so I’m finally answering your question is a guide. They need a guide or a mentor. What they need from a family office, they get it. They get a wealth manager, right? They need a doctor every once in a while when they’re getting old, and they, you know, have arthritis or whatever. They need a CPA, right? And all these people guide them. And they take the position as their guide with confidence, saying, I do this all the time.
GREG WARNER 13:56
You don’t. You’re good at acquiring wealth. I’m good at helping people give it away. Fundraisers need to be treated with exponentially more respect, and better training to help them understand their role in the life narrative of amazingly potentially philanthropic, successful high capacity people.
GREG WARNER 14:24
And if we treat ourselves and we treat our staff, we treat fundraisers, even the young ones who are learning letting them know that no, this isn’t about extracting wealth from people. This isn’t about manipulating, targeting, prospect identifying and I mean, I’m so offended by that and the way that we research these people to try and determine their wealth. It makes me nauseous.
RHEA WONG 14:54
Well, and not only that, like let’s be real, if you’re a person of real actual wealth, there are plenty of ways to hide your wealth. So I mean, to your point, it’s creepy. If you have a conversation with someone and you somehow Google or stalk them and their whole lives, and you know the name of their dogs, it’s like, okay, calm down stalker
GREG WARNER 15:13
You imagine on a first visit, you drop your folder and a whole bunch of prospect research falls out in their living room that says, target ask, ask them for $50,000. It’s like, I mean, if you wouldn’t be comfortable with that falling out of your folder in front of your donor, then it’s not right to have it. I believe that this gets a little bias because of course, my system does this with AI and automation. So I recognize that selfishness. But if you want to know about the donor and their capacity, just ask him.
RHEA WONG 16:01
So let’s go there. Because there are two things I really want to talk about. The first thing is how you identify people who are ready to talk to you. So the strategy… It’s not really a strategy. There are a lot of fundraisers who employ what I call a spray and pray. It’s like you would send these emails. You hope somebody who’s willing to meet with you. It’s not necessarily that you even have any kind of connection. You hope that they’re in a place where they might want to give to you. So what’s the strategy that you have to actually identify people who actually want to talk to you?
GREG WARNER 16:37
Yes! So let’s first break down the old because I had to research this. Because I was told by my customers early on, when, you know, I started developing. I was just a dumb donor. I’m just a dumb donor when I started this. I was like, oh, I don’t understand why I feel so bad after I’m engaging with my favorite charity.
GREG WARNER 17:00
I don’t get it. And they told me, well, if you don’t understand fundraising, get some books. I got some books. And I was like, okay, I still don’t understand this. I still don’t understand it. This doesn’t sound nice. So they’re all the same. You’re gonna identify people. And then you’re gonna, what’s the next step, maybe cultivate?
RHEA WONG 17:22
You qualified and you cultivate, right!!
GREG WARNER 17:25
And then you’re going to solicit them. It’s like this is all the stuff you’re going to do to them. So that’s the wrong way, by the way of going about any marketing or direct sales approach. Because it’s all about you, what you’re going to do, and what your boss wants. And of course, they want the activity metrics because they don’t understand what the hell’s going on. They just want to know that you’re out there doing something.
RHEA WONG 17:57
Oh, my gosh! I know. How many times I’ve been asked like, well, what are the metrics? Like the number of phone calls made or the number of emails sent. I’m like, what does that tell you? Other than I’m doing busy work anyway.
GREG WARNER 18:10
If you’re looking at the best business books and the way we weren’t run, we look at outcomes. Outcomes are meaningful, anyway. So if you unpack that, and I had been talking to you about this new operating system I’m developing because I call that DAS. And for those of us who are old enough to remember DAS, I had a dot matrix printer and you know, your file that you would crash.
RHEA WONG 18:35
Yeah, that’s what I used to play Oregon Trail on.
GREG WARNER 18:42
We’re in OS. We’re in a Mac world, and the operating system is still operating on DAS at most organizations. And we need OS, which I’m calling the engagement fundraising operating system, at least for now. We’ll see it because it’s been working on it for two years, but I’m finally bringing it out to people. But this operating system says like, okay, you got to pay attention to what we do as fundraisers.
GREG WARNER 19:12
Sure, I get it. But first, the metrics are all wrong. So I kind of rewrote them. But you have to understand where is the donor or prospective donor in the consideration continuum. Then your actions should be in line with where they are. Right? So getting back to your question then about how do you get people to self-qualify?
GREG WARNER 19:41
Well, first, you don’t decide we want people to qualify. That’s not it. You have to say to yourself, okay, where are they in the consideration continuum? Either they know about us, they’ve donated before, they’ve attended an event, or something, or maybe they’re just liking us on Facebook. So then the next step is, well, what’s the easiest, lowest cost, lowest kind of friction way to help people lean in?
GREG WARNER 20:13
Now, the private sector has figured this out. It’s content. Right? Provide content that people would be interested in seeing. Now, it could be that that content is fairly direct. I’m going through a marketing exercise with you like you really want to sharpen your pencil. You might do content, like on end-of-year best practices for forgiving, smartly. You know, one of our board members is an expert in this, and you can attend the event,
GREG WARNER 20:46
That’ll probably only attract wealthy people, and you probably should only invite wealthy people to that. But even that it’s too much about giving. Right? So let me go back and say, what you really want is you’ve got to devise an offer that helps people lean in to engage with you in a way that aligns with where they are. Where they are, in most cases, is their thinking they’re not even sure about their original identity. In other words, their why. Why do I care?
GREG WARNER 21:24
Most of them have to think for a minute. And remember, well, gosh, at the hospital, there was a nurse who sat bedside with my father, when I couldn’t be there for days and hours. And that’s the reason why… I forgot about that. But that’s why I give them. Everybody has an original identity, or a beginning point in their life story, where the cause began to intertwine with their life.
GREG WARNER 21:52
So the beginning point is here. The endpoint that we want is that them to find meaning in life, meaning purpose, belonging, and spirituality. We want to get to that endpoint. But you can’t just jump in bed and get married to these people. You have to figure out their original identity first. So what we recommend as the best way, the webinar might work a little bit, but the best way is really through a survey.
GREG WARNER 22:19
And when I first started doing that, sadly, all these companies started. They saw that we were getting traction at my company doing this. And then they decided, well, this is a neat tool. We’ll sell more printing with it or something or services. And then internally at nonprofits, they were like, wow! This is a great research project. No, it’s not a friggin research project.
GREG WARNER 22:44
It’s an opportunity to engage amazing people to find out where the intertwinement of their life story and your cause intersects. It’s not research. It’s engagement. And it gives these amazing people an opportunity to lean in, sort of at arm’s length because they love your brand. And they love your mission, but they don’t know you.
GREG WARNER 23:13
So they don’t want to talk to you yet. Because they’re at that stage, we have to give them a very nonabrasive, helpful value-oriented offer, which is a survey. You got to do it right. There are a lot of ways to do it wrong. And by the way, I’ve given it all away for free. It’s on my website, you know, how to do it right?
RHEA WONG 23:34
I’ll make sure to link to all of that information in the show notes. But I love that we’re going to talk about surveys. I love that you’ve highlighted that this is not like you send it out to your whole email list, right? You’re very selective about who you’re sending it to. And you do it. You drip it so that you’re able to actually interact with the responses that you get, right? Because as a donor, if I spend the time to fill this thing out, I want to know that someone’s reading it. Right?
GREG WARNER 24:01
Yeah, well, more than that, you want to you are taking it because you care about the organization and you want a deeper relationship with it. But you don’t want to go out on a date or get married yet. Right? So again, this is where most donors reside in the consideration continuum. Now, don’t mistake this for private sector surveys.
GREG WARNER 24:30
That’s totally different. You have to understand that the brain when thinking about a cause, the area of the brain that lights up, because it’s working, is part of the brain that’s associated with family and love. Right/ People think of charities as family members in an interesting way. So people are exponentially more likely to respond to a survey from a cause that they care about.
GREG WARNER 25:01
And in fact, that begins the first step of self-qualification. Because they’re leaning in. They’re deciding. The time is right not to give, but to at least engage. And look at this, I’ve been invited to a party. Everybody loves being invited, even if they don’t respond. They care about what I think. Now, the problem that I saw in the sector that happened to start 10 years ago, is all the vendors and the internal communication staff, they didn’t actually give crap what the donors said, or thought.
GREG WARNER 25:39
They either wanted to sell printing or marketing, or the communications department wanted to be able to turn it into a chart and make some kind of marketing decisions about how often to send emails. Well, you can’t get that from a survey, like everybody’s gonna say they don’t want to. It’s an engagement device that you should roll out slowly. Think of it as a first discovery visit. That’s not a real visit.
GREG WARNER 26:08
And people who take it, expect you to do something with that information that improves the value proposition they’re seeking from your cause and a deeper relationship. But what sadly happens, is if you don’t follow up with people and show them that their time was well spent, you cared about them, and you’re considering, at least considering what they said, and we’ve seen this in the data because we looked at data is your donation revenue will go down. Now, you just lost the trust of somebody.
RHEA WONG 26:53
Yeah! And I want to underscore that, so strongly for everybody, which is that the point of your communications is about trust. It’s about adding value and affirming trust with your people. So let’s fast forward. Let’s say I take this survey. I indicate that I might be interested in talking to someone on your staff about a gift. You know, we have the discovery conversation, where I think this is really interesting and innovative is the invitation.
GREG WARNER 27:24
In this new operating system, I want to help you understand first that there’s three shapes. There’s three simple things that we have to do. And I devised them as shapes. One is a pentagon. And the Pentagon is for pre qualification, not prospect identification, pre-qualification. It’s different word, I know. Sector will be like…
GREG WARNER 27:52
People should not be reached out to unless they say that the timing is right for them to talk to you. They have a deep personal life story reason why they care. They’re somewhat engaged, even taking the surveys, it’s showing engagement. And they’ve given you permission to reach out to them.
GREG WARNER 28:22
And, of course, underlining all that this that’s for the fifth part of the pentagon is that they have capacity. So how do you know that? Because the wellspring you already established can be wrong. They could be cash poor. They could be house poor. They could be have a business that’s going bankrupt. We don’t know.
GREG WARNER 28:43
But the way we determine it in a survey is we ask them questions about their likelihood and interest in giving away assets to support the cause. People who have capacity understand what it means to give away assets because like 3% of their wealth is in cash. So okay, so now you got someone who’s pre qualified. They said that the timing is right for them to engage in this way. They have a deep reason and they may even tell the story. In the survey, they’re engaged. They gave you permission.
GREG WARNER 29:19
They say they’re likely to talk to you if you reach out to them. And they said that they’re interested or considering giving their house and five other properties to the cause, especially because they don’t have any children and they’re getting older, right? You can get all that from a survey. So that’s the pentagon. Yu got pre qualification ding, okay, now I know who I need to reach out to. Then you reach out to them.
GREG WARNER 29:43
And that’s the second step. It is for complete qualification. We had pre qualification and now we have complete qualification. That can only be done by an expert, which are the people on this call. Complete qualification cannot be done by a survey or AI or anything. If it comes from from meeting with people, even if it’s on a zoom call, you make outreach, and you conduct donor discovery. What’s that?
GREG WARNER 30:09
I won’t get into all that because you want to get to the invitation. But that’s all about the life story of this individual, and how they’re seeking potentially to find meaning in their life through a deeper sense of belonging, commitment, and helping others. That’s what philanthropy is. It’s love. So how do they want to spread their love with the power, the money, the wealth that they have?
GREG WARNER 30:33
That’s what discovery is. Okay, now, you asked about the invitation. So that’s the number-three step in the second shape, the pentagon. This is a square. The third one, by the way, is a triangle, which I won’t even get into. But that’s all about, let’s call it the updated, modernized way to do moves management.
GREG WARNER 30:56
Since I hate that term, and you don’t move people. You don’t manipulate people. You help people and you support them, and you guide them. You counsel them, and you advise them. But the fourth one, so you got outreach, you conduct discovery, and you get to the invitation. And the invitation is this. And the challenge in the field, by the way, is the doctors, lawyers, CPAs, and all these kinds of advisors, they have it easy because everybody has been brought up knowing that if I go to a CPA, they’re going to ask me how much I make.
GREG WARNER 31:38
And I’m going to tell them, and if I go to a doctor’s office, they’re gonna tell me to take off my clothes. And I’m gonna do it, what the hell, like we trust these people. We’re told to trust them. And we do that stuff. We tell them what they want to know. We let them probe our ears. And but for reasons, they don’t have that. Right? In fact, people are a little fearful.
GREG WARNER 32:02
Trust needs to be built. And that happens in discovery. But when the time is right, and it might be even at the end of the first discovery call, you’ve got to take the position of the guidance stage, and you have to offer an invitation. So there are 10 components of an invitation. It’s really like a statement of work or an upfront contract.
GREG WARNER 32:27
So if anyone understands and goes back to SPIN Selling, if they read that book, or you get into any other sales trainers, master sales trainers, you have to understand the power of an upfront contract. Every expert salesperson, and it shouldn’t be every expert fundraiser recognizes the power of the upfront contract to set the stage.
GREG WARNER 32:48
This is who I am. And you’re not going to say it as mean, as I’m saying it because it’s just I’m from New Jersey. And that’s why I say things. But you are an experienced, caring, and loving advisor. And you do this every day, all year long for amazing people just like them. You have to establish that. That’s who I am. There are 10 components, by the way, so I’ll move it faster to the invitation.
GREG WARNER 33:16
But first is who you are. right? And you have a CFRE designation or this or that, or you’ve been doing this for 15 years, and you’ve helped these kinds of people. And what does that mean? Number two is what I do for people. And by the way, if you don’t have to write all these notes down because I’ll just send you this…
RHEA WONG 33:37
I’ll make sure to put your info in the chat and in the podcast notes if people want to get in touch with you because this is some gold here. Alright, so who I am? How I help people like you? What else?
GREG WARNER 33:50
You don’t need to use all 10, but seven or eight will do. Perhaps explain to them in transparency, when people bring them into the fold? It’s like you don’t bring a criminal defense attorney into your life unless you got something going down. You know you bring a CPA in at certain times. Maybe you’ve been doing it for yourself, and here’s when you do it.
GREG WARNER 34:17
Or, maybe you bring in a forensic accountant because you’ve got problems in your business. You got to explain to them because they don’t know. When do people like them bring people like you into the fold and welcome you? Next, that’s three. Number four is how the process works. Right? And most of us haven’t sketched it out, but we should. For transparency’s sake, doodle it.
GREG WARNER 34:45
Say this is how it works. First I meet with you and I really learn your life story and twines with our mission in this I try to uncover all that and then I invite you into a process. If you accept, here’s how the process goes. Right? Let them see that. Because most donors don’t know. And instead, they’re like, are we going to lunch?
GREG WARNER 35:11
And we get to know each other? Are you going to ask me for money? I don’t know. And that’s why they recoil because they’ve had bad experiences. They don’t know, what’s the game? Show on the game. This is what most donors do. This is the process we go through. Number five, and not in any particular order, but is that you have to express to them that you can only work with about 40 to 45 people.
GREG WARNER 35:37
This number of 150 is complete bullshit for a caseload. Because it comes from some findings that occurred in behavioral science and research, and also in research about how humans began to perform properly together. I think I read it in Sapiens if anybody read that book. It’s like 1200 pages long.
RHEA WONG 36:05
And Sapiens, and then I think, I think also tipping point, might have used that 150 number.
GREG WARNER 36:10
They use the 150 for that’s the total number that humans can really, really keep in mind as having relationships with some deeper than others. Right? So then we said, well, a caseload should be 150. I didn’t say it. I mean, somebody said it somewhere along the lines. Well, that doesn’t work because of you and your family and your friends.
GREG WARNER 36:35
So if you’re going to incorporate, the research from real serious professionals in the field is found, it’s about 40 to 45 people is all you can handle. And if you’re an executive director, and you got other duties, it’s maybe 10. Right? But you have to explain to the prospective donor. I work like an accountant or lawyer, I can have a caseload of about 40 people who I’m going to take on this journey and help guide.
GREG WARNER 37:03
And by the way, my salary is paid. Let them know my salary is paid from the past donations made by amazing people like you who I took on this journey. But to do the process right, I really need to stay focused on working with about 40 to 45 people. So if you, for any reason, throughout the end, by the way, my process, it takes about 24 months.
GREG WARNER 37:28
Some people take 12 months, some people take 18, and some people a little longer. But if you think for any reason that we won’t be able to get this done, and you make a decision within 24 months. I hope you’ll kindly opt out, or pause or unsubscribe, whatever, let me know because if I’m continually trying to work with you, and you’re not letting me know it’s over, that takes time away from other donors that I could be helping, and that cost this organization dearly.
GREG WARNER 37:59
So please be kind to us and the other donors. Just let me know. it’s okay. I’m a big boy. I can take it. I’ll add some other bullet points. That’s a very important point, though. You might also want to add, why do people trust you? Like, how about a couple of testimonials from past donors and the value they got from working with you in this process? That’d be helpful to leave it behind in the packet.
GREG WARNER 38:28
And by the way, I’ve templates for this. So you can create your own invitation kind of packet and you go through it with the donor. You just kind of go through it. Don’t turn it into a fancy brochure. Just go through it with them and say, this is how I work in case you’re wondering. If you were wondering how I work, I’ll tell you how I work. This is how I work. So yeah, so I’m halfway through, I’m on six, I think.
RHEA WONG 38:50
Yeah! We can go through the rest of it. But the question that is coming up for me is we recently had my friend Adam Michael on the call. He does West Coast fundraising with very serious, usually tech folks. And he’s said that he’s been lending gifts over text messages for less than a month. And so I’m just wondering, how does that inter interface with your invitation?
GREG WARNER 39:19
Well, these are the others that you’re cultivating. And you’re building relationships because these are not the transformational gifts for both your organization and the donor. I mean, I get it. For someone who’s worth $50 million, $50,000 committed over text message is like me giving 10 bucks to somebody, you know. So you have to understand and it makes them feel good and all that. It’s a different tier, though. It’s a different tier.
GREG WARNER 39:58
And you can have those. They’re sort of buzzing around. But at some point, I would recommend that talking. See, in other words, what I’m trying to say is, and I don’t know this guy, Michael, I don’t know. And I haven’t done his job. I don’t have that where people are just texting me saying they want to buy our services.
GREG WARNER 40:20
He’s fortunate, but if you want the most consequential gift, serious giving, it has to be done through a process where you establish who you are, you build that trust, and you have the upfront contract, so that the individual understands where they’re going with you. And they work with you on this. In other words, what I’m trying to say is, I think he’s leaving massive money on the table. Right?
GREG WARNER 40:52
With every one of those that he gets, he needs to get to a point where he sits down with some of them and offers the invitation so that he’s not getting $5, $10, or $50,000. But he’s getting 5 million. Right? To do that is after an invitation a proper invitation.
RHEA WONG 41:15
Yeah, I guess what I’m wondering with that, and this is probably another conversation for another time is, are we seeing different donor behaviors in younger generations?
GREG WARNER 41:28
Well, yes! It’s because of younger people, and I can speak for this from experience because when I started on this whole journey, I was 38. And I was giving like, he just you just described, and I thought I was a big major donor, right? 5000 here, and a few 1000 there. And yeah, I get into it. I’m like, oh, my God, I’m not a major donor.
GREG WARNER 41:51
And also, I can tell you that when I was 38, I didn’t think about the meaning of life. But nothing. I was trying to pick up my kids at school and being the coach for soccer practice. My mom was sick. I’m taking care of her. I was getting sued by my stepmother. I mean, all kinds of stuff, I didn’t have time to figure out the meaning of life.
GREG WARNER 42:11
I’m 53. now. Let me tell you some. I got friends who are sick. I got one who sadly died young. I’m starting to think about the meaning of life. So yeah, for younger donors, tech donors, and crypto donors, that can be thinking about that.
RHEA WONG 42:31
Right! There’s a sweet spot when people start to get self-reflective about what my legacy is and what I leave behind.
GREG WARNER 42:40
It generally happens in the 50s.
RHEA WONG 42:43
All right! Greg, we are out of time, unfortunately. We could have gone so much deeper into all of this, but I will put your information in the chat if folks want to get in touch with you. Where can people get in touch with you, LinkedIn or email? How do you how do people get more of what you’re selling here?
GREG WARNER 42:59
Well, by the way, this operating system that I’ve been working on for the past two years, I’m testing it out with some customers, friends, and such, and it’s really working. Because it’s just really working. I’m going to give it away to the sector for free. I mean, it’s not going to be one of those things where I’m trying to turn this into a big consulting practice and all that. I just want people to think differently, and try to do stuff a little differently. You can get in touch with me on LinkedIn, that’s where most people do, Greg Warner. On Twitter, I guess I’m on there now. I think LinkedIn just posts stuff automatically. Don’t reach out to me on Twitter. On LinkedIn, or email me at info@imarket smart.
RHEA WONG 43:49
You’re the info guy?
GREG WARNER 43:542
I’m really not, but the bill was sent to me. I want to become friends. And then I’ll white label what makes it so that you can email me directly. And I’ll give you this list of 10 because we got to like six. And I’ll give you some templates that people can use if they want to create their own little invitation so they can walk people through it.
RHEA WONG 44:13
Thank you so much. As always, this is value-packed. It has lots of value bombs in here. And I hope people start to think differently about major donor fundraising.
GREG WARNER 44:24
Thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s nice to see all your faces there, too. You all look like lovely people. And I think you, fundraisers, really deserve a better life. And that’s what I’m trying to create.
RHEA WONG 44:38
Yes, preach that! Fundraisers get beat up all of the time. They’re getting it from both ends, so we’re professionals. We should be treated as such. So, amen! Thanks so much, Greg. Thanks, everyone. Have a great week!
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