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Fundraising With Confidence, Part One w/ Thomas Dauber
53 Plays2 months ago
In Part One of this special three-part training, Thomas shares the opening portion of a webinar he delivered for Brady Ware’s nonprofit division. This session explores how personal history, family money messages, and early experiences with asking quietly shape the way fundraisers show up with donors. Thomas offers practical tools for grounding yourself in mission, understanding the roots of fear, and beginning the shift toward confidence and clarity in your solicitations.
Looking for fundraising coaching? Check out www.abundantvision.net
Looking for accounting or advisory services? Visit bradyware.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the 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. I'm your host, Tom Dauber, President of Abundant Vision Philanthropic Consulting.
Episode Focus: Webinar for Brady Ware
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome back to the Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast. Today's episode is a little different, and I'm really glad to bring it to you. Recently, I had the opportunity to present a continuing education webinar for Brady Ware, one of the leading accounting firms serving nonprofits across the country.
00:00:47
Speaker
They graciously allowed me to republish the recording here so that you can benefit from it as well. I want to extend a sincere thank you to the entire Brady Ware team for the invitation to speak and for giving permission to share this session with you.
00:01:02
Speaker
Their commitment to strengthening nonprofit leadership and financial clarity is the kind of partnership our sector needs more of.
Confident Fundraising Series Overview
00:01:11
Speaker
Now, the original presentation was delivered as a single webinar, but for this podcast, I'm breaking it into a three-part series so that you can listen in shorter, more focused segments.
00:01:22
Speaker
Across these three episodes, you'll hear us explore what it means to fundraise with confidence, not just in terms of tactics, but in the deeper inner work that shapes how we show up with donors.
00:01:34
Speaker
In this series, you'll hear me share personal stories from my own background, including how my own childhood shaped my fears around asking, and how I learned to root myself in mission instead of insecurity.
00:01:47
Speaker
We'll talk about the shift from scarcity to abundance, the power of clear, compelling vision, and the unique role CEOs and executive leaders play in major gift fundraising.
00:01:58
Speaker
We'll also look at the value of coaching, structure, and weekly rhythms that keep you moving forward instead of drifting. Now you'll notice that the webinar includes several reflection moments.
00:02:10
Speaker
If you're driving or out on a walk, just make a mental note of the questions. But if you're in a place where you can write, I'd encourage you to grab a pen. Those prompts are designed to help you connect this content to your own story, which is where the real growth happens.
00:02:26
Speaker
My hope is that this three-part series will encourage you, stretch you, and help you take that next step towards confident, joyful asking that opens doors for your mission and the people you serve.
00:02:40
Speaker
With that, let's jump into part one of this Brady Ware webinar replay.
00:02:50
Speaker
Good morning.
Tom's Background & Experience
00:02:52
Speaker
Before we dive into today's topic, let me share a little bit about myself. I'm a Central Ohio native and a proud graduate of Johnstown Monroe High School and Bowling Green State University.
00:03:04
Speaker
But my real education came from the nearly nearly three decades of working in higher education, faith-based and healthcare fundraising. I presently serve as Chief Advancement Officer for DOOR International, and I'm also the founder and president of the Abundant Vision Philanthropic Consulting, where I provide coaching and consultation services for major gift work and fundraising campaigns.
00:03:31
Speaker
I also host a podcast called the Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast. My podcast is full of interviews with fundraising veterans and helpful advice about fundraising.
00:03:42
Speaker
My show is available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and most places where podcasts can be found. As you can tell, I keep very busy. But when I'm not focused on the fundraising world, I'm trying new restaurants with my brilliant wife, traveling to places, going hiking, running with my dogs, or or spending time with our four adult children.
00:04:04
Speaker
My professional life has been deeply shaped by both personal and family experiences with money and with asking. Like many of you, my journey has included moments of real struggle and moments of breakthrough.
00:04:20
Speaker
Sharing those experiences is important to me because they form the backdrop for why I believe so strongly in helping people overcome the barriers that prevent us from fundraising with confidence.
Cultural Influences on Fundraising
00:04:34
Speaker
My hope is that we will connect today, not just around the topic of fundraising, but what it means to think of ourselves holistically and how all the experiences of our lives shape our fundraising.
00:04:48
Speaker
Now, before we get too far in, let me give you a roadmap for where we're going today. We're going to explore how to solicit financial support from a place of confidence.
00:05:03
Speaker
Our experience of confidence comes from many different places. This can include our family and cultural background, our psychology, and even our understanding of our organization.
00:05:18
Speaker
They all shape the way we view asking, money, and generosity. I'll share some personal stories from my own journey as a fundraiser, and we'll pause along the way for you to reflect on your own experiences.
00:05:33
Speaker
We'll also explore ways we can develop greater fundraising confidence so that we can inspire philanthropy with bold asks and big, clear vision.
00:05:44
Speaker
Lastly, we'll talk about the role of the CEO. why it's so important in fundraising and how strategic coaching and peer mentoring can put you on the fast track to fundraising success.
00:05:57
Speaker
By the end, my hope is that you'll walk away with a clearer understanding of how your background impacts your fundraising. And more importantly, some practical ways to move forward with confidence and freedom in your asking.
00:06:11
Speaker
I want to stress again, today I'm going to be asking you some important questions for reflection during this presentation. These are going to be very personal questions. I'm not looking for responses, but I do really hope you'll take time to engage with your own heart and answer them.
00:06:28
Speaker
Thinking about these questions is going to position you to fundraise with confidence.
00:06:35
Speaker
Now, As I mentioned, our personal backgrounds play an outsized role in how we see the world and how we view money.
Childhood Stories & Fundraising Fears
00:06:47
Speaker
I grew up in a home where I was afraid to ask. We were very poor and it was unacceptable to want things for yourself. One time when I was in sixth grade, I saw a brand new Nintendo game cartridge in the back of a car, still in its plastic wrap and everything.
00:07:07
Speaker
It seemed very expensive to me, and I was worried that my parents were spending too much on me, and for a game I wasn't particularly crazy about. I tried to explain this to them in hopes of saving the money, and I got grounded for a month for presuming that the video game was for me.
00:07:25
Speaker
Now for me, this was one of those moments that shaped my psyche and the way I saw the world. My personal background, my family history, taught me that I should hide my needs and to be very careful if I was going to express them.
00:07:42
Speaker
Now, fast forward to my first fundraising job. I was raising monthly pledges working for Central Ohio Youth for Christ. I got a meeting set with one of my mentors from college.
00:07:56
Speaker
I intended on asking him to make a pledge, but after spending hours talking about the work my organization was doing, my part in it, I just couldn't do it.
00:08:08
Speaker
There was this awkward silence. I thanked him for his time and I left. I drove two hours home asking myself, why hadn't I been able to pull the trigger?
00:08:22
Speaker
I had quite a bit of experience speaking in front of groups and even sending solicitations by mail. I felt like I was a strong communicator, but to my surprise, I discovered that the lessons that I had learned as a child had given me a real fear of asking for money, especially for pledges that would go to directly support me and the work I was doing.
00:08:52
Speaker
and betting we've ah all had moments like this when we missed the opportunity to make an ask out of fear. The connection between my childhood beliefs and my reticence to ask took me time to understand.
Mission over Insecurities
00:09:09
Speaker
But some of you may not have taken the time to consider this. So I wanna pause for a moment now And I'd like for you to either take out a piece of paper or you're on your computer, which I guess all of you are, to pop out a word processor or something and just write an answer to this next question, just for a few seconds.
00:09:33
Speaker
Take a moment to think back to your own first fundraising ask, or even when you ask for something as a child. How did your family, your community, or your culture shape what it meant to ask?
00:09:50
Speaker
Was asking bold or rude or honorable?
00:09:59
Speaker
For me, understanding that I had some baggage to deal with was the first step towards overcoming my fear of asking. So how did I do this?
00:10:12
Speaker
One thing I learned was to center myself in the good work my organization was doing rather than my own self-perception. What do mean by this?
00:10:23
Speaker
Well, in my case, I had some insecurities about my self-worth. But one way I found to get around it was to just take that off the board entirely.
00:10:35
Speaker
I had to remind myself before every solicitation that my work wasn't about me and my value. It's about the value of the mission, the value of the impact and the value of the people we were trying to help.
00:10:52
Speaker
So if you're struggling with fears of rejection or other anxieties about how you'll be received as a fundraiser, I'd encourage you to ask yourself some questions. Is the mission of my organization a good one?
00:11:07
Speaker
Do I really believe in it? Is it worth supporting? Will people feel good knowing they've helped this cause? Now I'm hoping that all of you are working for organizations that you really believe in and really want to see succeed.
00:11:24
Speaker
If not, that's a CE presentation for another time. But if you can answer these questions affirmatively and have a clear understanding of why you feel those ways, then you too can remind yourself before each solicitation of the truth of your situation.
00:11:43
Speaker
This ask isn't about you or your emotional baggage. This ask is about your mission and making a difference in the world. This can really be transformational.
00:11:56
Speaker
So as I did that over and over and over again, I ultimately was able to develop a real comfort level with asking people directly for support.
00:12:08
Speaker
And that's one of those things that tends to snowball. The more support you solicit, the more confidence you gain and the more people you ask. And it just builds on itself from there.
00:12:21
Speaker
Another reflection question for us. Now I'd like for you to write down one sentence about why your organization's mission matters to you personally.
00:12:38
Speaker
So I spent eight years in that fundraising context, asking individuals for monthly pledges and making essentially minimum wage doing it.
00:12:50
Speaker
I was broke, desperately broke. During those years, I'd gotten married, had a child, and even had a second on the way, and we were a one-income family.
Scarcity Mindset & Financial Challenges
00:13:03
Speaker
Even with the help of WIC, we just couldn't keep food on the table. The one thing that kept us fed was some friends who volunteered for a local food pantry.
00:13:15
Speaker
They would actually go to Panera, pick up day old bread and pastries, and then swing by our home so that we could have first dibs on whatever they picked up that day. As a dad and as a husband, you can imagine this was an incredibly hard time of my life.
00:13:32
Speaker
You see, I carried real baggage from my childhood about finances. My mom was terrible with money. She ran up credit cards. My stepdad didn't make much.
00:13:45
Speaker
And one time, I remember even having to sell some of my favorite toys in a garage sale just to help pay the electric bill that month. There was all this stress and scarcity mindset about money growing up.
00:14:01
Speaker
To find myself in a similar position, to see my daughter going through the same sorts of things I experienced was really, really tough. Now the net result of this was that I had a view of money that was deeply tied to scarcity.
00:14:19
Speaker
To me at the time, $25 seemed like much money. seemed like so much money On the occasions that I did find someone who would donate $100 or more a month, I was blown away.
00:14:32
Speaker
I couldn't imagine anyone having that type of room in their budget. Even when I was rooting myself in the importance of my organizational mission and was willing to make the ask, it was hard for me to really believe that there were people who could afford to give more than $100 a month.
00:14:52
Speaker
And so I never asked for more than that.
00:14:57
Speaker
Another question for you. Think of a time when your financial situation or your families or communities made it hard to imagine soliciting larger gifts.
00:15:12
Speaker
What limiting beliefs came from that experience?
Learning from Rejection
00:15:19
Speaker
Well, when I finally left Youth for Christ and began working for The Ohio State University,
00:15:26
Speaker
hope my friends in the audience from Georgia will will forgive me for that reference. But my scarcity mindset very quickly presented a barrier that I couldn't avoid dealing with.
00:15:40
Speaker
I had been used used to soliciting donors for $25. Now I needed to become comfortable with soliciting donors for $25,000.
00:15:52
Speaker
My chief development officer did something brilliant to help me. I've been cultivating a particular donor to death. We had met three to four times too many, in part because I was fearful of bringing the conversation to a head.
00:16:11
Speaker
I needed $100,000 to fund this program that this donor was interested in seeing the the college start. but I could tell from our interactions that it was unlikely that he was gonna give anything at all.
00:16:28
Speaker
He was the sort that viewed his wisdom and guidance as all the gift anyone could need. So my boss sits me down and tells me, you are gonna ask Dr. Smith for $100,000 at your next meeting.
00:16:45
Speaker
You've done the work, you've identified his interests, you've built the relationship, Now go do it. So I drove an hour to have lunch with him and his a assistant.
00:16:58
Speaker
And we walked through the project. And just as we got to the end, where I had prepared to say something brilliant like, Dr. Smith, you've been so helpful in guiding the college to help us create an actionable plan for alumni mentoring to help our students.
00:17:16
Speaker
but we don't have the budget to fund all of it. Would you be willing to pledge $100,000 to help us bring this program to fruition? Sounds great, right?
00:17:27
Speaker
Only that's not what came out. Instead, that last part sounded something like this. Would you be willing
00:17:38
Speaker
to help pledge $100,000? was awful. thousand dollars was awful He, of course, declined. And once again, i had a long drive home to reflect on why I had such a hard time talking about giving.
00:18:01
Speaker
Now,
00:18:04
Speaker
getting over this didn't happen overnight. But the first step I needed to take was definitely soliciting someone I knew who would turn me down and seeing firsthand that it was okay.
00:18:19
Speaker
No one was mad at me. My honor was intact. I had done my job and now I could move on to other people. It was okay to get a no.
00:18:30
Speaker
In fact, I eventually came to realize that the quicker I could get to know, the more efficiently i could do my job. This helped me have the courage to keep asking.
00:18:44
Speaker
And eventually I came to see that there really is ah percentage of people in this world who have $100,000 to give and who would very much like to give it to a worthy cause.
00:18:58
Speaker
Now, the more I interacted with these people, I began to develop a real belief in philanthropy and the understanding that there is no lack of money in the world.
Transition to Abundance Mindset
00:19:13
Speaker
There's only a lack of vision. This helped move me from having a scarcity mindset to having what I call and what many other people call an abundance mindset.
00:19:25
Speaker
A mindset that believes deeply that the world is full of people who care and who want to make a difference with their money. If we can only show them how to do it.
00:19:37
Speaker
So the answer, if this is something you're dealing with, if you're afraid to ask, if you're fearful of rejection,
00:19:48
Speaker
it's the answer is practice, a lot of practice. So today, i could sit down with anyone and fearlessly explore with them if a six-figure or even seven-figure gift to a particular cause might make sense to them.
00:20:04
Speaker
What's the difference? Today, I understand that any potential gift isn't a statement about who I am, for good or bad. If they give, it's not because I'm a good person.
00:20:17
Speaker
It's not because I'm worthy of their gift. And it's not a statement about their approval of me. It's because of the cause. It's because of the impact. It's because of the mission.
00:20:29
Speaker
Furthermore, I now understand that it's unwise to project my experiences of wealth and money on other people.
Understanding Donor Perspectives
00:20:36
Speaker
If I do, I'm bound to get it wrong. My job isn't to assume anything for a prospective donor.
00:20:44
Speaker
My job is to ask good questions. to listen carefully so that I can come to an accurate understanding of what an individual is thinking about philanthropy.
00:20:57
Speaker
Rather than being afraid of discovering someone doesn't have donative intent or major gift capacity, I'm actually glad to know it. It saves so much time.
00:21:11
Speaker
I can bless and release that relationship and move on to other people who may be in a different That's all the time we have today, but be sure to tune in next week to hear the next part of this exciting conversation. Now, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star rating on your podcast provider.
00:21:32
Speaker
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.