Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Bonus Q&A From the Brady Ware Webinar w/ Thomas Dauber
48 Plays1 month ago
This bonus episode features the full Q&A from the Brady Ware webinar. Thomas answers practical questions about overcoming fear, stretching vision responsibly, building donor confidence, and creating the structures that keep fundraising focused and sustainable. This final installment brings together the most actionable insights from the entire series.
Looking for fundraising coaching? Check out www.abundantvision.net
Looking for accounting or advisory services? Visit bradyware.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to the Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast. Whether you are a seasoned professional or a first-time fundraiser, we have the advice you need to take your next step toward major gift mastery.
Bonus Q&A Session Overview
00:00:18
Speaker
I'm your host, Tom Dauber, President of Abundant Vision Philanthropic Consulting.
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome back. So when we started this series, the plan was to release it as a three-part conversation. But after we wrapped that final segment, we ended up having a full Q&A session with my co-host that was too practical and too helpful to leave on the cutting room floor.
00:00:43
Speaker
So today's episode is a bonus section. You will hear real questions, real scenarios, and some deeper explanation of the concepts we covered in the first three parts.
Pre-Solicitation Strategies with Donors
00:00:54
Speaker
If you found yourself wanting more specifics or wondering how these ideas play out in real situations, this session will fill in those gaps.
00:01:03
Speaker
Let's jump into the Q&A. Thank you, We've few questions here. I'm going to go over to the first one. You mentioned early in your presentation asking donors the right questions to be able to distinguish between whether or not they're interested in donating and how much.
00:01:23
Speaker
And do you have some examples you could share of you know some of these types of questions?
Presenting a One-Page Brief to Donors
00:01:31
Speaker
Certainly, Thomas. that's That's a great question. um
00:01:36
Speaker
You know, i'm I'm a big fan of pre-soliciting. um Before i I do a major gift to ask, I would love to have a separate meeting to inform the donor of what we're doing, cast some vision around our work, and and then actually ask them for their blessing and permission ah to um have a gift conversation.
00:01:59
Speaker
You know, I think... I think back to my days at the dental school, I think one of our one of our favorite comments was, hey, um but we're not asking you for a gift today, but but we'd love to start a conversation with you to see ah if if there might be something within our mission that aligns with your passions and and can help help you accomplish your philanthropic goals.
00:02:25
Speaker
but Would you be willing to start that conversation with me? um anything like that. It's always important those types of questions, because going to different for every donor and probably every nonprofit, to always be very hypothetical.
00:02:40
Speaker
People aren't afraid of hypotheticals. People are afraid of of distinct, clear questions that demand a decision right now. so So, you know, another question you could ask them is, you know, Thomas, are are you the sort of person we should be thinking about for a gift like this?
00:02:58
Speaker
Or um Thomas, I know you care a lot about our organization because of your years volunteering with us. um we We often find that the people who give their time also really want to give their their money if they can.
00:03:11
Speaker
um Would you be open to exploring what that could look like? it's It's all gauging openness and just asking for permission to explore before getting to the ask.
00:03:23
Speaker
it's It's critical. And I learned this at an AFP conference at a a ah course on negotiation. And it's so important that you never surprise your donors.
00:03:33
Speaker
They should always know what they're getting into when you meet with them. We never want to bait and switch them with anything.
00:03:41
Speaker
Very good. Thank you, Tom. Got a couple of questions here on the ah you mentioned a one page brief. um And in some particular sentences that should be included in the one page brief.
00:03:57
Speaker
Do you have anything there that you could share and the, you know, to to allow some of our participants to maybe take a couple of notes? Well, you know are you're talking about in terms of, oh yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:04:12
Speaker
so So that was you know the one sentence of purpose that names the human outcome, the three sentences that describe the future you're building, the one sentence that connects vision to a first milestone, one sentence that states the funding required for that milestone and the time horizon, one sentence that invites partnership.
00:04:32
Speaker
and And so i I don't have a ah specific one that I give to people. It's going to be different for every organization. But if you just think about, you know if let's say you're you're trying to feed ah folks that that that don't have food in your community. you know Your sense of purpose, really you should have that already, right? Because you should every organization should have a vision statement and a mission statement.
00:04:54
Speaker
And so it's taking that and crafting it around ah yeah and putting it in narrative or sentence form, right? And then when we're thinking about the future that we want to build, again, it's not about funding the gap.
00:05:08
Speaker
It's not about, you know, i want to make sure that we have enough money ah to meet our goals this year. It's, you know, well what would the world look like if there was no hunger? and and And it's not just that.
00:05:22
Speaker
It's so crucial that we go further um down down that list. like like Now, I'm not an expert on on on food insecurity or its social impact. So for those of you in the crowd that are, please forgive me.
00:05:36
Speaker
But I'm betting that if we can end world hunger, ah we'd probably see grades in school go up. Right. and And so if if grades in school go go up, well, what's that going to do for our communities?
00:05:49
Speaker
You know, is there going to be less poverty or is there going to be less unemployment? You know, what what's what's the big picture there? Are people going to parent better when they're not worrying whether or not their children can eat?
00:06:02
Speaker
um i'm I'm sure they are. So whatever those downstream him and implications are, we're talking about painting ah with color include that stuff.
00:06:13
Speaker
Not necessarily as promises you can make, but but just promises. a bold picture of what the future could make if you could really change those things. But it's it's crucial though, that you not just talk about this idea, you know the one sentence that connects vision to a first milestone, and it could be two or three milestones, right?
00:06:33
Speaker
You gotta you got to show, especially business people that have some understanding of like, you know how do you execute a business plan? You've gotta show them you know what to do to get there.
00:06:44
Speaker
I can think of one situation where I inherited a campaign and they had had this bold dream for something that would would do really incredible things um and no one was giving to it.
00:06:56
Speaker
and And when I started to meet with our leaders who were in charge of that portion of the the thing, I discovered there was actually no plan at all as to how they would do it or if they got the eight million dollars they wanted.
00:07:10
Speaker
Like, how would they even spend it? They didn't know. that isn't the way to win credibility. And so you've got to actually spend some time and and hopefully you've got some people on your board, if if not you personally, that that knows a little bit about business planning.
00:07:25
Speaker
You don't have to do something that's so good that you could take it to a bank to get a loan, but just something like a one pager or two pager that really demonstrates to a donor that you've really thought through how to get to this this vision in a way that's that's believable.
00:07:41
Speaker
um And then of course, you wanna be able to say too, on this this fourth point about um the time horizon, you've gotta know like, when do you need the funding by?
00:07:53
Speaker
Like it may cost you $600,000 to reach this goal, but if you only need $50,000 in that first year, be able to communicate that because what you don't wanna do is accept a $600,000 gift from a donor and And then two years later, you still haven't spent all of it.
00:08:10
Speaker
And they're sitting around wondering what the impact is. So you want to clearly clearly communicate all that up front.
Handling Direct Donation Requests
00:08:16
Speaker
And then that last sentence, it's the sort of thing we talked about you know earlier in terms of, um you know would would you be open to partnering with us? Would you be willing to make an investment here?
00:08:28
Speaker
and And there's two different things. Like if this is a pre-solicitation conversation, one where you're not making the ask directly, maybe it's someone you don't know as well. It's inviting them into a conversation that may lead to a gift.
00:08:43
Speaker
But if it's if it's like your board chair and and you know they're on board and and you know and they know you you want to ask them for a gift, then it's, yeah, what could you see yourself making a six-figure investment here and and and and then have some things and make it a conversation, right? You want to have some thoughts in your head about, well, a six-figure gift could be $999,000. It could be $500,000. It could be $100,000. Have some backups in your mind.
00:09:13
Speaker
Go for the biggest one that you were think is not reasonable. I always always recommend people soliciting gifts that are twice as big as they expect because you just never know when that works out for you.
00:09:24
Speaker
and And I've never had anyone get mad at me for asking them for a little bit too much. um But you need to have that sentence at the end. And if it is a direct ask, you need to be need to be direct.
00:09:35
Speaker
um I think a real problem that that some ah well-meaning fundraisers have is they just sort of, they're like, well, give this some consideration. you know Think about it and whatever feels right to you, right?
00:09:47
Speaker
and And that's that's okay. But there's a lot of people out there that but if you really tell them what you need and what you're hoping they'll give, you don't want it be demanding. You don't want to say,
00:09:58
Speaker
Thomas, I really need you and expect you to give half a million dollars. It would be, Thomas, we would we would love it if you could consider giving us half a million dollars. Feels very different.
00:10:09
Speaker
One is demanding, one is expressing what we hope could be the case and and giving, but still giving them some idea about what that number is and the type of impact that could make. Thank you. That's very, very helpful there,
Identifying and Engaging Major Donors
00:10:24
Speaker
Tom.
00:10:24
Speaker
um I got another one here, or it's isn't related to identifying potential major donors. So, you know, for a small nonprofit, do you have any tools or platforms that you could recommend um that could be utilized to identify potential major donors?
00:10:42
Speaker
Well, sure. there's there's There's platforms like DonorSearch and iWave that are super helpful. um Certainly, there's there's some great consultants out there that that have their own um ah subscriptions to those things that could do that for you if you don't have the the human resource to maybe manage all that.
00:10:59
Speaker
Um, you know, uh, and they're, they're easy to find out there. I won't, you know, throw any specific links out right now in terms of individuals. I want to be fair to everybody.
00:11:11
Speaker
Uh, but, but yeah, there's definitely ways to do that. Uh, just a general rule of thumb and, and, you know, and unfortunately i don't have evidence-based research to, to back this up with, but I'm, I'm 30 years of experience and talking to other people, we all seem to agree on this. you know if If you've got a thousand ah constituents, probably you know you you can usually count 10%, about 100 of them are gonna have major gift capacity.
00:11:39
Speaker
and And you could probably count on 5% of those ah have an even greater, you know maybe mega donor ability. Now that's going to vary from organization organization. it's not always going to be true, but generally speaking, um, those people are out there.
00:11:54
Speaker
And, uh, you know, if, if you were to go and, uh, you know, get a screening, it might cost you $5,000, um you know, just to screen your your constituents.
00:12:05
Speaker
But that would begin to give you some inkling of who are the people that have money. I mean, they're not 100% accurate. They miss a lot of things, um but they can still be very helpful as you're searching for donors.
00:12:16
Speaker
And beyond that, though, the best thing is is to start asking. Ask your board. You know, ah you should all have boards that care about your organization. um And hopefully you've got some people of means on your boards that care about what you're doing and just start networking.
00:12:32
Speaker
ah Find out who those people are that care about those things.
00:12:37
Speaker
Really good.
Role of CEOs and Boards in Fundraising
00:12:38
Speaker
You mentioned mentioned really utilizing your board. um Here's a question for you. What's what's one thing? in your mind that CEOs and boards often misunderstand about their role in major gift fundraising?
00:12:56
Speaker
Well, I think sometimes they underestimate how much their presence matters. I can think of one one CEO, and we'll keep everybody anonymous here, ah who who hired a ah ah chief development officer.
00:13:12
Speaker
And this the CEO is so charismatic and so well-loved. I can't think of a person that of means that knows that person that would say no to him.
00:13:25
Speaker
But but to my to my knowledge, he's not been involved in any major gift solicitations. He's been leaving it to his his chief development officer because in his mind, he's thinking, oh, um this is their job.
00:13:39
Speaker
And so he hasn't gone on any asks, hasn't asked any. and And I'm telling you, this this guy's the real deal in terms of charisma and vision. um And i not every CEO is that.
00:13:51
Speaker
But like I was saying earlier, they embody the mission. and And they're the one that can that that can say to a donor, this will happen with credibility. um yeah i don't I don't want to in any way downplay the importance of of development officers like myself.
00:14:09
Speaker
Like we can do that work with credibility. um But there's always a little bit of of skepticism, I think, from donors, or there can be, because they look at us and say, well, you're getting paid to be here and ask
Addressing Personal Biases in Fundraising
00:14:22
Speaker
me.
00:14:22
Speaker
this right it's not necessarily because you're sold out to the vision or or your life is committed you know to this work um and so as much as we can do the job for the big asks i would always want to have the ceo in there um just because there you know there's just a presence there that that can't be replaced by a development officer
00:14:46
Speaker
you've got comment here from uh one of our participants um It's very, very good. Very good statement. Very good thoughts here. But um here's here's the comment. My thought is it really I'm not really soliciting funds. Instead, I'm sharing my journey journey and asking the donors if they would like to come along and help us get to the vision.
00:15:09
Speaker
The trick at my current organization is helping to lay the land for the bigger ask. It's historically smaller donations were the big ask. um Any thoughts on that?
00:15:24
Speaker
Well, you know, I don't know your context. I don't know your organization. So it's it's hard for me to speak specifically. But my my gut is, for the average nonprofit,
00:15:37
Speaker
What you're talking about, casting a vision, inviting people to partnership, that that's certainly, <unk> you're going the right direction, but I would say you're stopping short. um if If someone says, yes, yes, I love your vision. I want to be a part of this.
00:15:53
Speaker
if If you go one step further, and this takes some courage, it's the next question is, well well, what might that look like to you? what What would you have in mind?
00:16:05
Speaker
And really get them to start talking about what they what they might wanna give. Furthermore, I would say you might even wanna have some numbers in mind. um you do my My question to this person, if I were their coach, would be, well, how much does the whole vision cost?
00:16:24
Speaker
Like, is this a $10 million dollars vision? ah you know If it is, i would be ah completely unashamed to say, hey, we've got a $10 million dollars vision that's gonna result in this transformative vision for this community or this this set of people or in this specific situation.
00:16:42
Speaker
ah we need people that can really step up and do six-figure, seven-figure gifts. We need people that can do five-figure, six-figure gifts or four-figure gifts. Whatever those numbers are, they scale you know for your organization.
00:16:55
Speaker
Could you see yourself making ah a significant, even sacrificial gift to help make this this dream a reality and really try to get to a specific number um because you know if if you don't do that, the likelihood is that the the person probably isn't going to give you as much as they might if you directly asked.
00:17:18
Speaker
Okay. Well, very good. at and Maybe I have ah one one final question here. So just to capstone this, but you've helped a lot of leaders overcome fear in fundraising.
00:17:31
Speaker
what What would you say is the most common barrier that you see And how do you coach these leaders through that barrier? um It's projection. you know ah we We all project our own assumptions and expectations about money and philanthropy and generosity on everybody else.
00:17:51
Speaker
you know That's why if you're talking to a person who is not inherently grateful, um And there's there's actually been some evidence-based research that shows like 40, 50% of people have an inherent leaning towards gratitude.
00:18:06
Speaker
um A yeah research institution out in California, I think at Berkeley, ah did the did the research on that. um And there's also other research that's not been connected to that, but it should be, that that talks about gratitude being an indicator of of giving, of of propensity to give.
00:18:24
Speaker
um If you talk to someone who's not grateful and who doesn't have a bent towards generosity, and you ask them, who would give to something like this? They're almost always going to say, ah nobody's going to give to that.
00:18:36
Speaker
You need to go ask Jeff Bezos. You need to go ask the pharmaceutical company. You need to go ask Walmart because nobody wants to give like that. And and there you know those people will project, right?
00:18:49
Speaker
Well, the the problem is is if you're at a university or at a nonprofit and you've got a leader who who may be one of those people, or at the very least may not have the experience, they're going to project their their expectations.
00:19:03
Speaker
That Dean that I was talking to you about, you know generous guy, um but but was projecting his own stuff. Now, the follow-up to that story actually is Dean number two, um he ended up having an opportunity ah to ah to to document ah like a an eight-figure planned gift.
00:19:27
Speaker
And he decided that that would be too pushy, that that would be too private of a conversation to have, too personal. And so he said, well, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna press that guy.
00:19:39
Speaker
Just so happens that that Dean had his own planned gift ah to to his alma mater. And he wrote and and he he actually made a point of telling me, I'm not telling them what I'm doing.
00:19:53
Speaker
I'm not going to tell them what what the plan is, how much it is. I'll let them find that out after I'm gone. well Well, a development officer working for him ended up talking with that individual with the eight-figure plan gift and ended up booking it, um despite what the dean told them.
00:20:11
Speaker
so So it's just, that's the thing. And in what I'd recommend to all of you doing, whether you're, if you're a CEO, you need to take ah a long look at your heart and ask yourself, what am I projecting on other people?
00:20:25
Speaker
And if you're a development officer in in this conversation right now, you need to like have a direct conversation with your CEO. Call out the elephants in the room. what What assumptions are you bringing to to fundraising?
00:20:38
Speaker
What attitudes about philanthropy ah is coloring the way you see our work? Direct conversation, thoughtful conversation like that, as long as people are open to it, um it can be really beneficial.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:20:54
Speaker
Thank you so much. That was very good information. all All about building that network and leveraging your network, utilizing your board, So, so important.
00:21:09
Speaker
Thanks, Thomas.
00:21:13
Speaker
Well, there aren't any other questions, is this where we close thing up things up, Thomas? Great. Well, I want to thank everyone again for for coming out today. It's been a real privilege to be able to speak with you and share with you from my personal experiences.
00:21:29
Speaker
Take care and God bless.
00:21:33
Speaker
Now, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star rating on your podcast provider. I'm your host, Tom Daubert. Thank you for joining me as we journey together towards major gift mastery on the Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast.