Transcript
Speaker: the best people, the most accomplished people going, come on, we're not adapting, we don't have a strong enough vision, we don't have enough ferv, we're not speaking to new realities. I can't tell you how often I hear that. And then you know I test these documents produced by nonprofits, including colleges and universities, with high net worth donors almost every week. What do you think I'm hearing? 1950s, 19s, where are you? What decade are you in?
Speaker: You know, this is the post -Madman era. We don't think this way anymore. 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.
Speaker: We are back for the third and final part of an epic conversation with a real thought leader and fundraiser, Jim Langley, president of Langley Solutions. Let's pick up where we left off with Jim. So it won't be a surprise to you, Thomas, that when we do customized onsite training and when I interview the frontline staff talking about the gateways and barriers to greater performance, what is it that they identify as the greatest limitation to their greater performance?
Speaker: the lack of major gift worthy concepts. You got me out there selling eight track stereos when people are looking for AI, right? What's the next great thing that we could be doing? What's leading edge? What can I get people jazzed about? You've got me selling strategic pillars and that's an ancient structure and they're looking not for pillars,
Speaker: They're looking for strategic openings in a new disruptive, adaptive environment. You see, even the language. So what I keep stressing, and this is I think what we have to educate when you're inside, is the way people make money influences the way they give their money. And folks, we're dealing more and more with entrepreneurs.
Speaker: Yeah. And we have to develop the mindset and attitudes and language of entrepreneurs in what we project if we hope to raise more money from them. What people say to me, Thomas, which is a great compliment, is they use my post to pass them on to their boss. This guy, he's been around a long time. This guy's got a good reputation. This guy's helped a lot of people raise a lot of money. And he's saying, and I'm seeing the same thing. Yes.
Speaker: And they also use me to say, will you come in and talk to the executive team? Will you come in and talk to the board? But you see, I think that what we should all be doing is creating a body of thought and evidence that ultimately becomes escapable from the powers that be. They keep running into it. Oh, we keep hearing the same thing. We hire different people and they keep coming in and saying, our best people keep saying the same thing. Our donors are saying, why aren't you doing it, right?
Speaker: quantify this new shape that philanthropy is taking, which is more entrepreneurial, which is much more about solving problems and less about supporting institutions broadly defined, capture that so that you make this body of evidence inescapable. Now, some people will resist evidence and where they will start to become receptive to evidence is
Speaker: when they start to fail and the consequences start to get visited on them. And in 2022, we had a very concerning year, which people thought was an anomaly. 2023 will prove that it isn't and that the rates of attrition and rates of household loss are continuing and rates of distrust are escalating and it will dawn on people with the back to the walls.
Speaker: we better try something else. If out of desperation, if it comes to that, great. My favorite, you may have remember this from one of my phrases, the most insightful advice ever given in my estimation comes from John Kenneth Galbraith, great economist who said, a revolution is the kicking down of an already rotted door. The doors have been rotting,
Speaker: The powers that be aren't recognizing them. When they start to collapse, they'll call it a revolution, but we will know it's a long rot. And when that revolution comes, then you go, well, folks, guess what? You say what you've been saying for 20 years, but now there's receptivity to it. Yeah. Well, the sooner the better that day comes. Yeah. I mean, because the sad fact of the matter is while you and I may, you know, quibble about
Speaker: Semantics, you and I both know the best people in this field are all too often feeling sub -optimized, frustrated, handcuffed, and the best people. The most accomplished people are going, come on, we're not adapting. We don't have a strong enough vision. We don't have enough ferv. We're not speaking to new realities. I can't tell you how often I hear that. And then you know, I test these documents produced by
Speaker: nonprofits, including colleges and universities, with high net worth donors almost every week. What do you think I'm hearing? Probably the same thing. 1950s, 19s, where are you? What decade are you in? This is the post -Madman era. We don't think this way anymore. One very famous mega donor who created a huge foundation, I asked the head of his foundation how my client was doing and she said,
Speaker: Not well. What's wrong? She said, you don't bring him proposals. You bring him problems. I think that encapsulates what the market is trying to teach to us. Issues, problems. Stop coming to us with begging bowls so that you can meet your budget. Well, that's that gets us, you know, to something I commented on of yours this past week. I mean, that sounds like the difference between charity and philanthropy. Yes. Bingo. Yeah.
Speaker: Bingo. That's the paradigm. And then it's so interesting, Thomas, that we don't often know our history. So you go back to John D. Rockefeller, who's considered by historians and by people who study philanthropy and is the most significant thinker in the early 20th century. And it's John D. Rockefeller who says, I'm tired of charity. I want to get at the root causes of the issue.
Speaker: I want, and he or somebody around him, coins the term of scientific giving. And how do you make giving scientific? You start to gather evidence. And what I'm struck by is so many people don't realize that Rockefeller and the superstructure he built around him to create scientific giving was the basis of social science. That's where that term came. That's where that concept
Speaker: Let's study humanity. Let's study poverty. Let's study racism. Let's study women without opportunities. Let's study these things and figure out how to bust them up. And that started in the early 20th century. And here we are more than a century later and haven't understood that that charity will always remain because people will always be empathetic.
Speaker: But big investment is made in the name of getting at the root causes of issues and chipping away at what seem to be intractable problems. That's how, when you address that, that's how you start to command very significant giving.
Speaker: Oh, that's, that's well -observed Jim. Yeah. You know, I know we've got that, you know, you work with an entrepreneur who can, and you speak that language. We're on the cusp. We watch them light up. Oh, and it's all fraught with problems. It's all gnarly. Just get some more excited versus that raw, raw, everything's great. And just give us a lot of money so we can keep on keeping on and they go, huh? Or endowment. That's when I love.
Speaker: Help us build. Oh, good. Lock up energy, lock up resources. So you have a rainy day fund. Oh, good. That's what I was put on this earth for. Tom Dobber here for Abundant Vision Academy. Are you a nonprofit leader who's new to fundraising? Are you feeling crushed by your fundraising goals and not sure how to find success? My online class crafted from my 25 years of experience and more than 5 ,000 donor meetings, Abundant Vision Academy
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Speaker: Well, I know we've got 10 minutes left. You've got a hard break here. I've got a speed round of questions I'd like to ask everyone. So we'll try to get through them quickly. If we don't, don't worry about it. Is there an organizational problem you've experienced while VP or even as a consultant that you've been able to solve as a leader that you're particularly proud of? Yes. I mean, I would say.
Speaker: that the organizational problem is a lack of self -knowledge, that decisions are not, that what people think are rational decisions are not. So when we find a leader who's locked into a decision -making mode that is based on something that early life taught him or her, when we help him understand that
Speaker: they're filtering information through something idiosyncratic. If we can get them to understand who they are, they start to make decisions much more objectively. So I think that's the new frontier, Thomas, is it isn't better fundraising technique. It isn't even better institutional strategy. It's getting leaders to understand who they are so they make decisions more strategically and objectively and they understand what's preventing them
Speaker: I'm doing that fear, apprehension, all those early life adaptations we all make to, you know, to in that sort of early program self, we have to deprogram ourselves so that we see greater potential going forward. This is almost a universal human condition. So I think I'm proud of taking the field into this more emotionally intelligent, more psychologically astute level so that both we understand, decision makers understand themselves and thereby
Speaker: understand the psyche of donors and the psyche of giving. Oh, wow. That's fascinating. What issues, besides the ones we've discussed already, are you seeing emerging in the fundraising world that concern you? You know, it is the, I saw a survey yesterday
Speaker: And I think it was, I can't remember, Pauline, somebody, a follower, she's quite good. 70 % of nonprofits have open positions. 70%. This is a symptom of a larger disease. So what does it concern me is the larger disease. What is the larger disease? This collective mistrust in the overarching paradigm of traditional fundraising.
Speaker: It's this, why do I want to go back into a place that does the same things? It's almost your opening question is what do you say to people who are on these? And so the real issue is we as a society are seeking new compacts, new ways of working together to address issues of common concern. We're rejecting the traditional methods, modes, structures, and we're searching for new ways
Speaker: and very few people are getting it. Too many places are acting like an institution when the world wants them to act like a cause. Many are acting like a place that you should give to when people want them to act like a place to give through. Too many are acting like you give, we decide. And more and more people are saying, no, we decide and we do this together. We decide together and we make things happen.
Speaker: they're not getting the big epochal change. Yeah, for sure. What was the most meaningful gift you've ever facilitated? And why was it so important to you? Oh gosh, you know, it's, it's sometimes, you know, people will say it's the, it's the biggest gift, but it's not that way to me. It's very often the person who gave most generously within their means or gave for a reason that was surprising. So,
Speaker: Um, the gift at the time, I think was maybe $10 million in today's terms. It would probably, if you did a multiplier, you know, a cost of living kind of thing, 20 to $25 million. And it was anonymous. It was to honor somebody else. And the reason he gave it the person being honored was a great man who had accomplished great things. But the reason he gave it was because this man had befriended him when he was a freshman.
Speaker: at Georgia Tech was dirt poor, had not a single change of clothes, had to wash the same clothes, natively smart, had a kind of hickish accent, and he gets befriended as a terrified freshman isolated alone by a senior classman
Speaker: who's got some innate intuitive skills and befriends this guy and puts him at ease, goes to the dean of students, says this guy has no money. And the dean of students uses a kind of an emergency fund to buy him a couple extra changes of clothes. He takes that kid that might have run and keeps him and embraces him. But he's the big man on campus. He goes on to this great business career and political career. And this man never forgets. The poor kid never forgets. And so here's what I see, Thomas,
Speaker: the powerful alumnus and I go visit him, and this man has built an empire, a media empire, and go to him, and he says, we want to honor this gentleman by naming the business school. And he looks at the volunteer and he says, just tell me what you need. And he says, we could use $10 million, and he takes out and writes a check.
Speaker: Loyalty, friendship, and deep personal gratitude. Just tell me the amount. That's beautiful. And you know, Larry, the great volunteer, who was a great volunteer, Larry, just tell me, Larry, and I'm like, what just happened here? The man without equivocation, without question, writes the largest check I've ever, and for somebody else, and he remains completely anonymous. Yeah.
Speaker: Wow. That's beautiful. Wow. Real philanthropy for real personal reasons. And, you know, the beauty of love and friendship, you know? Yes. Oh, that's a great story, Jim. Well, on the flip side, and I know we got three minutes, but can you real quickly tell us about a time when things just went horribly wrong with the donor? How did you recover? Yeah, I've told the story before, but it's worth telling again.
Speaker: I took a donor to lunch. I asked him for a million dollars. I had every reason, too. He was the champion of an initiative. We had done everything he asked. All the things I would preach, I would say I had checked that box. I had done my work. I was respectful. I invited him to lunch. I think it's a foregone conclusion. I asked him for a million dollars. He's starting to take a sip of his iced tea, and he bursts into laughter, and it becomes kind of a delirious.
Speaker: It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. And I liken it to being in an accident because I went into shock. I can't remember how the conversation concluded. I can't remember how I got out of the room. Still to this day, I don't know what happened after that. I went into shock. And then I was so embarrassed by somehow having failed and I didn't know how that I avoided it.
Speaker: So, if he came into a room, I went to the other side of the room. This went on for more than a year. I was just, I was humiliated. I think I was hurt by him and I was angry at him for, you know, what did I do? So, 14 months later, he walks unannounced into my office and says, I think I can do that million dollars. Lesson learned. He was tremendously wealthy, but he had not been philanthropic. The largest gift he had ever given was $50 ,000. I jumped him 20 times that. Lesson learned?
Speaker: Before asking anybody for a sum of money, look at the largest gift they've given anywhere, and in the last couple of years, then be careful about trying to jump them too far, too quickly. Yeah, yeah. That's a great lesson, Jim. That's a fantastic lesson. Not those ranking systems that say what they're capable of. Look at their largest gift anywhere and understand that people stare, step their way up to larger levels of giving as they get comfort.
Speaker: Well, that's a great note to end on there, Jim. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with the audience today. Thank you for spending some time with me as well. I've so enjoyed it. My pleasure and I'm glad we leave as friends who better understand one another's positions and we are much more of the same mind and I think what divides us sometimes within this field is semantics. So let's work on that and let's work on finding better ways to work together.
Speaker: Wonderful. Will do. Thank you, Jim. Have a great day. All the best. Thank you for what you're doing. As always, I'm your host, Tom Dauber. Thank you for joining me as we journey together toward Major Gift Mastery on the Abundant Vision fundraising podcast.
