Real conversations with Major Donors

Steven Shattuck: All right. Victoria, is it okay if I go ahead and get this party started officially?

Victoria Dietz: Absolutely. Do you want me to not share my screen yet though, right?

Steven Shattuck: Not yet. I’ll give you the cue.

Victoria Dietz: Okay. You’ll flag me. Okay, great. Let’s do it.

Steven Shattuck: All right. All of you, welcome. Thanks for being here. Good afternoon if you’re on the East Coast. Good morning if you’re out on the West Coast. Thanks for tuning in. We’ve got a special Tuesday webinar here. Maybe all days have lost meaning for you like they have for me, but it is Tuesday and we have an awesome webinar, so I’m glad you’re all here. I’m Steven. I’m over here at Bloomerang, and I’ll be moderating today’s discussion as we talk about real conversations with major donors. We’re going to have a real conversation about real conversations. It’s going to be awesome.

Just a couple of housekeeping items. We are recording this session. We’ll be sending out the recording as well as the slides later on today. So if you have to leave early, or you’ve got another appointment, or a toddler interrupts you, which might happen to me, it might happen to Victoria, we’ll see, no worries. We’re going to send that stuff to you today. We’ll send you the slides, we’ll send you all the goodies. I’ll get that email to you later today. Most importantly, please feel free to chat in any questions or comments throughout the hour. We’re going to try to save some time at the end for Q&A, so don’t be shy. There’s a chat and there’s a Q&A. They are different, I don’t know why they split them up, but whichever one you use, we’ll see the questions. We’ve also got Twitter. You can tweet to us and I’ll keep an eye on that. We’d love to have feedback because we like for these to be interactive.

If this is your first Bloomerang webinar, I just want to say an extra special welcome to all you folks. We used to do these webinars every Thursday, but we’ve been doing webinars, it seems like every day, since this whole coronavirus crisis started, because we want to get that good information out to you. We love doing these webinars, but what we are most known for is our software. We’re actually a donor database provider, so check that out if you’re interested or want to learn more. But don’t do that right now, because one of my favorite people of all time is joining us. Victoria is great. Curtis Group is great. Victoria, you’ve been a friend of the program for a few years now. How are you? Are you doing okay? That’s what we’re most worried about. You guys are staying healthy up there?

Victoria Dietz: All things considered, we are well here in Northern Virginia. Thanks for asking. Very happy.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. We’re thankful for that, because I know you’re closest to some hot spots. Normally, Victoria is on the road helping her clients. Awesome work over there at Curtis Group. You’re going to want to check them out. They really know their stuff. We have some mutual clients. Everybody’s always happy. And they’ve got a great blog too. They’ve been on top of all of the current events stuff that’s been happening. They’re one of the first places I checked, because I know there’s going to be a good post up there.

But what can I say about Victoria? She’s awesome. She’s super involved in the fundraising community in Virginia statewide. She’s out there helping her clients and she’s got some really good advice for you. We scheduled this webinar a few months ago. We did not anticipate a global pandemic being here when we are presenting.

Victoria Dietz: We weren’t the ones to call it, Steven.

Steven Shattuck: No. Exactly. But we said, “You know what? Let’s still do it.” It’s still relevant information. You all are going to love it. So I’m going to pipe down, because you’re not here to hear from me. I’m going to stop sharing, Victoria, and I’ll let you start yours. Let’s see if it works. Looks like it’s working.

Victoria Dietz: Great. Give me just one minute here. I’m going to get this into full screen. All right. I’m going to ask Steven to help me, because I am not at this point seeing our comments, so if there’s anything that pops up . . .

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. I’ll keep an eye on it.

Victoria Dietz: So welcome, everyone. I am thrilled to be here with you all today. We’re going to talk about having real conversations with major donors. In the true spirit of things, I’ll warn you that I’ve got two toddlers, a puppy, and a husband roaming my house, so hopefully we’ll make it through this together with no interruptions, but apologies in advance if something happens.

Today we’re going to talk quite a lot about getting conversations started with our donors. I want to say, just to get started, that there is a tremendous amount of content available right now on how to talk to donors around the crisis, how to communicate with people electronically, and how to ask for gifts around this COVID-19 crisis. I am certainly going to reference the fact that we are in uncharted territory, but for today, we’re all going to simultaneously close our eyes and imagine a time when we’re actually able to get out of our houses. And we’re going to talk about meaningful donor conversations.

A little bit about the Curtis Group. We’ve been in business for 31 years now. We’re based in the Virginia Beach, Virginia area. However, as I mentioned, I’m located in Northern Virginia, and our client base spans Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and down into North Carolina. Thanks, Steven, for the plug on our blog. We have been publishing quite a bit around the pandemic and really how to navigate these waters, so I’d encourage you to check out our newsfeed there. But again, for today, we’re going to talk about a time when we’re able to get in touch with donors, and of course, we can have some conversation at the end if you all want to ask any specific questions around COVID-19.

So what are our goals today? First, we’re going to talk about who we should be talking to. Who are the donors that we should be focusing on, and how are we going to build meaningful relationships with them? Then we’re going to talk about practical things to say to them, which sounds very 101, but I find it really interesting that some of our more seasoned volunteers, and occasionally even some of our more seasoned fundraising staff members, still have questions about this. So we’re going to take a very practical approach, and hopefully you’ll leave this webinar with some great things that you can put into practice right away. Nothing’s worse than spending an hour of your time and feeling like, “Okay, that was great conceptually, but I’m not quite sure how to implement that.” So we’re going to focus on that piece today.

Let’s set the tone. As a reminder, this is the Giving USA study. This data was published in June of last year. I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on giving and the level of generosity that is in our community. The new data for 2019 will come out in June of this year. And I happen to sit on the editorial review board of Giving USA. We are actively looking for ways to reference the current crisis and look forward in that way. But 2018 essentially was a flat year. Adjusted for inflation, there was a very minor dip in giving, but $427 billion was given in 2018 in this country. It followed four years of incredibly solid growth, and even though it was flat, or down about 1%, it was the second highest year of giving ever. I always like to set the tone and talk a lot about how generous we are in this country.

Now, you all have seen this slide, hopefully. This is where the dollars are coming from, dollars by source for 2018’s giving. If you haven’t shared this slide, or really the past two slides, with your board of directors or volunteers, I would really encourage you to do so moving forward. One of the most obvious things here is that individuals make up an incredibly large piece of this puzzle. But there’s one thing I want everybody to be aware of, if you’ve never seen this data fully presented before, and we could do three hours on just this data alone, which I won’t do to you. If you take a look at that foundation piece of the puzzle, about half of that 18% is actually family foundations, which are individuals. Then if you take a look at bequests, 9%, those are individuals who have passed and their planned gifts are being realized. So that’s almost $9 out of every $10 given in this country coming from individuals.

I say this because I know many of you have heard this, hopefully more than once, and I just want to set the tone with how important it is to focus on individual relationships and individual donors. Absolutely not to minimize the incredibly important role that foundations and corporations play, but today we’re going to focus on those individual donor relations. Although I will say, every time I’m talking with a client, I make the point that most of your corporate and foundation gifts evolve in the exact same way that an individual ask may. It just might require a little more paperwork.

So let’s jump in. We’re going to talk today, as I mentioned, a lot about individual donors. I thought I’d give you just a couple more statistics. I’m assuming that a lot of you are “Chronicle of Philanthropy” readers and may have caught their “dollars up, donors down” segment that they’ve published about America’s essentially disappearing donors. What the data really showed is that individual donors, especially high net worth individuals, are focusing on fewer nonprofits. They’re seeing their giving as an investment and therefore they expect to be treated as though it is an investment. I even have some major donors who don’t use the word gift or donation anymore. They’re talking about their giving as an investment, and they want to see direct results, just as if they had bought stock in a company and they wanted results as a shareholder. So they’ve really rolled up their sleeves and taken a seat at the table, wanting to see impact from their giving.

What does that mean? That means that the nonprofit community has got to be great about reporting that back. We’re going to talk about some creative ways to do that. It also means that you’ve got to spend time caring for these donors. Hopefully you’ve also seen the data. Several universities and major healthcare systems have taken a look at this regularly and have published on it, where they looked at the number of individual donors in their major gift officer portfolios, their donor portfolios. There were some institutions that had 200 or 300 people assigned to individual gift officers.

Through a series of data analytics and donor research, in partnership with their database company, they said, “Let’s work smarter. Let’s see who we should really be focusing our time on.” Some of those programs went down from an average portfolio size of about 150 people for each major gift officer to 40 to 50 people per major gift officer. And guess what? They raised more money, and oftentimes they raised significantly more money, because they were showing impact and spending real time getting to know their donors and real time cultivating their donors. So we’re going to talk about that whole process. That’s our theme for today.

You all know this. We call it the five I’s of fundraising: identify, inform, interest, involve, invite. It’s the fundraising cycle, and hopefully everybody who’s been in this industry for more than just a couple of months is familiar with this. We’re going to touch on every component of this today and how to have meaningful conversations with your donors through it.

So we all know about this part, the five I’s of fundraising, the way that the fundraising process can and should work. What goes wrong? We at the Curtis Group spend the vast majority of our time with clients focused on what we would consider major gift work. That number is different for every organization. We’ve worked with organizations who are working on their very first $1 million campaign, all the way up through campaigns that are focusing in on that quarter-of-a-billion-dollar zone, in higher ed primarily. We see certain red flags pretty frequently across all sizes, types, sectors, and experience levels. Here’s what we’re seeing. Unfortunately, we see a lot of major gift officers and executive directors and CEOs who, instead of being out externally facing, even though they know they should be, are buried in a pile of desk work.

Last time I was with you all, we talked about maximizing your personal capacity and how to minimize time in the office and maximize time out. That link is still live on Bloomerang if you want to check that out. But this is a red flag that we see: people inundated with the day-to-day and really not able to focus on building these donor relationships.

We also see a lot of folks relying on mass communication. The conversation might go something like this. “Okay, well, John Smith, he gave you $100,000, or $1,000, or $10,000, depending on the client, in your last campaign. When’s the last time you spoke to Mr. Smith?” And I often get, “Well, he got our annual report, and he would have certainly received that impact mailing that we did, and he gets all of our e-blasts.” While that’s great and important, we always have to remember that we’ve got to have a multipronged approach. That’s not the ticket to relationship building. Imagine if you were working on building a friendship or even a romantic relationship with someone. You would not do it through email and mass mailing or even written communication. We’ve got to be using those same intuitive concepts when we’re thinking about donor relationships.

The next thing is that it’s really easy to assume. I’ll share another story. We were working on a campaign with our community college client, and they had a fairly comprehensive campaign running. One of the components was that they were raising dollars for nursing scholarships. They were going to go ask a doctor who had given to them before for a gift, and they just assumed that this individual would be really interested in giving to nursing scholarships because of his profession. Well, come to find out, he had just about zero interest in giving to nursing scholarships, but his daughter wanted to become a veterinarian, and this community college happened to have a really robust vet tech program. The organization actually made the ask for the nursing program and then had to backtrack, because, unfortunately, the time wasn’t spent to get to know that donor, to know where he would like to plug in.

That goes with the next bullet point, that there’s limited or little personal knowledge. What do you know about that person? What motivates them, why they give to you, why they give in general? Some of my favorite parts of the job are when we’re conducting a campaign planning study or feasibility study. We get to go in and talk to people about their charitable giving, and these conversations are meaningful relationship building. We want our clients and all of you out there across America to be having those same kinds of conversations. So we’re going to talk about specific questions to ask.

The last one is that there’s never actually an ask. One of the questions that we ask when we’re interviewing these philanthropists or donors is, “When is the last time X organization sat in front of you and made a person-to-person ask?” Unfortunately, we often find that organizations just aren’t doing that, period. We won’t ask you to raise your hand virtually, certainly, but think about that. Are you actually asking your donors, and are you doing that with a specific number of in-person visits? We’re going to talk through that conversation flow.

The first thing you have to know is who we are talking to. Sometimes this is a major barrier, so I’ll very quickly touch on what we would like to see you pulling out of Bloomerang or whatever database you’re using, regularly. I know that seems silly, but do it at least once a year. When I was a gift officer many, many years ago, these reports would sit pinned on my desk board because I always wanted to be able to reference them. So pull your top 100 donors of all time to your organization. And take a look: are there any surprises there? We obviously encourage you to back out any individuals who have been marked as deceased. But take a look, cumulatively, at who your biggest donor is. You might know who the biggest donor is, but numbers 7, 8, 9, 10, 25 might surprise you. You’ll find some gems here if you look at longevity giving.

Also, your top 50 annual fund donors from your last three years is another great report to have, making sure that you’re having regular contact with those folks. Your top 15 corporate supporters over the last five years, and we recommend your top 15 foundation supporters over the last 10 years because of grant wait-out cycles. We’ve got some foundations we work with regularly that only give once every five years, so you want to make sure that you’re capturing all of those. And then, of course, your longevity members and donors. We all know that these are great planned gift prospects. I have one client with 175 years of history, which is incredible to think about. They are in Baltimore, Maryland, and they’ve got folks who have been members of that organization for 60-plus years. So make sure that you know who those people are and that you’re having regular conversations with them. And then, of course, any wealth screening results, making sure that you’re looking through that.

A COVID piece of advice: while we’re all at home, hopefully you have access to your database remotely. This is the time to pull and refine a lot of these reports, and even look for errors in them, and then take that time to go back into your database and correct them. That way you’re positioning yourself for when you can, in fact, make appointments. Even though we’re encouraging people to make virtual appointments right now, once you can make in-person appointments, you’ve got this list ready to go.

So what are our rules for success? I’ve said it about 17 times and I’m going to say it about 700 more. We’ve got to be meeting in person with our donor prospects, especially those top donor prospects. If they attend your gala, that’s great, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about relationship-building, one-on-one conversations. Certainly you can bring a volunteer or an executive lead with you, but I mean in-person, face-to-face meetings. We find it very helpful when our clients set specific goals.

Those in large organizations oftentimes have this built into their performance metrics in terms of annual review. But if you’re in a smaller organization, or just an organization of any size that hasn’t put this in place yet, take this downtime to think about what is realistic in terms of in-person meetings. How many folks should I be meeting with for an ask? How many should I be meeting with from a cultivation standpoint? Make sure that this is a critical step. Make sure that you’ve got someone holding you accountable. Even if you are the executive lead, president and CEO, or executive director of an organization, make sure that you’ve got metrics that you’re aiming to hit and that there’s someone helping you make sure that happens, be that an assistant, your director of development, or your board chair. This is a game changer for groups that take this really seriously in terms of their numbers.

Again, as we talked about, do your research, but don’t assume. We spend time talking through the game plan, so to speak, for every single one of our client visits. A lot of that can come with great prospect research, which might lead you down a path that the donor, in fact, doesn’t want to go down. So we’re going to talk about those discovery questions. Know your stuff, but don’t assume. We all know what that does to you and me. Be in regular contact. One of the words that I use quite a lot with my clients is “excuses.” Look for any excuse in the book to pick up the phone, shoot an email, write a note, or meet with a donor or a prospect. We’ll talk about a couple of those in a minute.

We’ve already talked about the importance of showing meaningful impact. Of course, I hope that you are getting your volunteers engaged, and I’ll say one of my favorite things to watch is a volunteer who I would call a more reluctant volunteer in the beginning of a campaign, or the beginning of a ramp-up of a major gifts program. They’re very timid and unsure of the entire process. They don’t want to ask their neighbor for dollars, and then at the very end, they’re addicted to it. They’re excited by it, and they’re the ones leading the charge.

This last one is another phrase that I use with my clients a lot, and one of my all-time favorite ways that I feel like we’ve been successful is when a client starts saying it back to me. Be unapologetic about making the ask and setting the appointment. You all are doing incredible work, some of you literally saving lives. So be unapologetic about what it takes to do that. It takes resources, and in order to get resources, dollars, you’ve got to be setting these meetings and getting out in front of your donors and asking. Be unapologetic about that and excited about that.

Appointment setting. I want to cover this very quickly. This is incredibly important. We want to make sure that you’ve got these wheels turning. Oftentimes we recommend that if support staff is available, you train them and actually get them to set meetings for you. And talking about being unapologetic, I really recommend, I’ll use the word aggressive, but in a good way, a more aggressive approach to appointment setting than most people usually use.

Oftentimes people will say, “Okay, in the meeting in January we said I’m going to call them.” They call them, and then February comes and they say, “Well, no, we called them in January, but they never called us back.” I really encourage a process where you alternate phone and email, and you do that one to two times per week. My very first job in the nonprofit community was to be one of these people. I was an appointment setter for a major gifts team, and it was the best training I ever could have received to launch a career in fundraising, because I’m not scared to pick up the phone, and neither should you be.

Also, when you do this alternating phone and email, and I’m going to give you a script on the next slide, it helps you qualify your lead, because the donor knows you’re not going to give up. If you’re only calling once a month, it’s pretty easy to ignore that. But if you’re calling more often than that and emailing more often than that, they’re going to take you seriously. You’re either going to get a yes, which is great because you’ll get the meeting, or you’re going to get a “no, not right now,” and you can cross that person off and move on to someone else. So be persistent.

Again, two touches per week. I really encourage you all to set this on your calendars. I used to do it daily when I was a gift officer, but even if it’s once a week, 10 to 20 minutes, once, twice, three times, five times, whatever you can justify, put it on your calendar and treat it like a meeting. One of my best tips is that my favorite time to call for appointments was around 2:00 or 3:00 on a Friday afternoon. Most people thought, “Okay, I’ll just call them on Monday,” but I was the one picking up the phone, and guess what? People were answering, because their volume had decreased and everybody was in that Friday afternoon mindset. So again, be persistent and treat it like it’s very important. Treat it like a meeting, because it is. It’s vital for success.

This is sample language. This could be done on a voicemail because, let’s face it, that’s the world that we live in. “Good morning. This is . . .” State your name and where you’re from. “I’d love an opportunity to get together for X, Y, Z,” whatever’s appropriate for that prospect. “I know how busy you are, so I’m also going to follow up with an email with some date options.” And guess what? In that email to Mrs. Smith, I would say basically a version of this. At the end of it, I would say, “I know how busy you are. If I don’t hear back from you next week, I’ll give you a buzz again.” Again, very friendly, very light, very quick, short email. I wasn’t getting into my case for support in that initial contact, because, remember, that’s what the meeting’s for. So this is simple language. It works really well for me. And if it’s useful for you, I welcome you to use it.

Let’s talk about once we are in front of the donor. What are some of these discovery questions that we find to be most useful? First, we want to know what their connection is to us, our work, and our mission. A lot of times it’s useful to ask really big picture questions. “Tell me the story. How did you first get involved? You’ve been a donor for us for 10 years. Tell me how you got connected.”

I’ll say that this is one of my favorite questions to ask, and the question that I see clients get great results from, because it makes people think back: “Okay, why do I care about this place? Why do I give my time? Why do I give my money?” But I will also say that sometimes, when a donor has been giving for 10, 5, maybe even just 2 years, you can pick a timeframe, people are reluctant to ask this question because they worry that the donor thinks the organization should already know that, that it should be in a file somewhere and magically transmitted from gift officer to gift officer. So they tend to shy away from questions that they feel the donor might think they should already know the answer to. I’d put it right out there on the table. And if you are new or newer to your role, I would say milk that for all it’s worth. Ask these questions.

Other ones that I like to ask: “What do you think is most important about the work that we do? What impact are we having, in your words?” Again, let them talk. Be very direct. “Mary, you could give to any organization in this community or country. Why do you choose to give to us?” That will trigger an emotional response and get your donor talking and telling stories, which is so important.

What program did they find the most interesting? If you’ve told them about a case for support or a specific series of programs, at the very end of your conversation you might say something like, “We’ve covered a lot of ground today. Of everything that we’ve talked about, what excites you the most or what is most interesting to you?” And then, of course, we always like to be focused on seeking advice. We all know that phrase. “What would you like to see us working on moving forward? Where do you think we should be focusing, in your opinion, as an investor here?” And then, of course, “What questions do you have about our work?”

We all know that we should be listening a lot more than we should be talking. We know that, right? But it’s human nature to do the exact opposite. And I’ll tell you, that was a hard component for me to get over when I was first in major gift fundraising, especially because I felt like I needed to have a ton of paperwork and go in there and know everything and say everything and just wow the folks. That’s not what this is about. This is, again, about an emotional connection and really listening. It’s a listening exercise. So these are organizational discovery questions. You all will be getting this list if you haven’t already. Steven will be sending it out.

What about big picture giving questions? As I stated earlier, these are some of my absolute favorites to talk with donors about. “How does your family make their giving decisions?” If I’ve got an individual that I know has children and grandchildren, I’ll ask them, “Do you guys get around the table together and talk about charitable giving? What are the priorities of your wife or husband, or really even of your children or grandchildren?”

I tell this story often, so those of you that have seen me present before, forgive me, but I think it’s a really important lesson. I was working with a client on a major capital campaign, and they had a board member who was a very generous donor of theirs. This board member had younger children in the six-to-nine range, two of them, and the organization had spent a lot of time cultivating that board member and that board member’s spouse. They were ready for an ask, and right in that last cultivation stage, they were asking a couple of these discovery questions that we had prepped for. Come to find out, they had a family foundation. They got together every August, the wife, the husband, and the kids, and everyone got an equal vote, including those young kids. It’s mind-boggling, right?

So there was $250,000 on the line for this nonprofit. That was a mega gift for them, and they hadn’t cultivated half of the decision-makers. Thankfully, they got that bit of information, and we put a plan together to cultivate some pretty young kids, and I’m thankful to say that it really worked. Had they not asked questions like these, they never in a million years would have known. Come to find out, that donor’s daughter’s personal philanthropic priority was penguins. We had to move the needle with that young lady and show her the impact of that client, which we did successfully.

A couple of other questions for newer donors. “When you give to a new nonprofit, what are the things that you look for to make you feel really good about that investment or that gift?” Use whatever language you like. What are they looking for? What do they want to see? How often do they want to be communicated with? What are their personal hobbies and passions? All of those questions should be on the list too. Where do they vacation?

Again, this is like building a friendship or a business relationship. Make sure that you’re taking the time to answer these really important questions. And then, of course, “Who else should I be talking to about our work?” This is incredibly valuable, because they might talk to you about their business partner. They might talk to you about their brother out in California who is a decision-maker in their family foundation, or they might talk to you about their neighbor down the street. So make sure that you are asking these discovery questions.

And I know Steven would be nodding furiously if I could see him right now. Make sure you’re taking all of this information and putting it into your database. Both your future self and a future gift officer or executive director at your organization will really thank you. So take that next step.

I actually had a client, and we have an even more expanded list than this, as you can imagine, based on the type of work that the clients are in. She would take this list with her. Certainly she wasn’t taking notes under every single one of the questions, but every so often during a meeting, I would watch her casually open her portfolio, scan down the list, close it calmly, and ask the next question, just to remind herself, “Okay, what is it that I said I was going to talk to this person about?” Immediately after that, she would get in the car and write down shorthand notes of what the conversation was and what that donor’s answers to these questions were. Then she was very efficient. She would scan that back to their database person, and the database person would input those notes into the database. So very, very important stuff.

Okay. Cultivation meetings. We’ve talked about all this. You’ve got three clear goals here. First, you need to get to know your prospect, and that involves a lot of listening. You might even say that at the beginning. “Mary, I’m new to the food bank. I just really wanted to take this time, number one, to thank you for your past support, but also to learn about you and what makes you interested in our work.” Set the tone early, and then you’ll see people relax because they realize you’re not going to ask them for a gift. I have some people that say that right at the beginning too. “I promise I’m not asking you for a gift today. I really just want to talk to you about your passion for our mission.”

Second, after you’ve worked through this casual conversation, weaving in personal questions about them, make sure that you are sharing a clear and concise vision. If I could, I would underline and star those two words. I just saw that Tom Ahern is up next on a Bloomerang webinar. Steven will fill you in on when that is. He boils it down. I really encourage you to attend that webinar about meaningful short statements and how to make sure that you don’t overwhelm a prospect. Because we’re all doing so many great things, it can be really easy to get on that hamster wheel. So just think about two to three things and write those down. If that’s an exercise you haven’t done with your board or your senior staff yet, you should do that. What are the top two to three things that you are most proud of that we’re doing? What are the top two to three things that you want to see us accomplish? Really refine those conversation talking points. That’s a great exercise.

Step number three is in many ways a tipping point for the relationship. Unfortunately, I would say that it’s the easiest one not to do, because we get so excited about all this great information that we forget to set the expectation for follow-up. I often like to phrase it and think about it as an actual request for permission. So at the end of the conversation, make sure you ask something like, “This has been wonderful, Mary. Thank you so much for this incredible amount of time you’ve been so generous to give. I really want to think about what we’ve talked about today. I want to maybe go back and talk to the team about X, Y, Z program that we discussed and answer some of those questions for you. Would it be okay if I came to you in a week, month, you pick the timeframe, and talked to you about a potential investment in that initiative, or in our annual fund, or in our mission?”

So ask permission to come back and make that ask. That goes for individuals, corporations, and foundations, and everybody in between, if there is such a thing. Use those questions as an excuse to circle back and build their relationship. You should have that cultivation meeting and have several touchpoints with that donor that don’t include mass emails, several personalized touchpoints, before you actually call them back and say, “Hey, I’d love to sit down with you again, as we talked about last spring. I’d really love to talk to you about a potential year-end gift to us.” They will remember that they agreed, because they said yes when you said, “May I come back and speak to you about a gift?” Then it’ll be a lot easier to get that appointment.

So make sure that you are upfront about that next step, in terms of the fact that you are going to ask them for dollars. Don’t forget, we’ve all got horror stories in our portfolio about forgetting to invite the spouse. I used to say include the spouse, now I just say invite the spouse, because oftentimes we’ll say, “John, or Mary, we’d love to talk to you and John about this gift. Do you think John should be a part of that conversation, or would you like for us to just come talk to you?” Make sure that person is making the call on that, so that there’s not any perception of bias, and make sure you’ve got the decision-maker in the room with you.

Now, when we wrap up with campaign clients, we do, of course, a SWOT analysis with them. One of the things that people talk about loving the most about our work is the fact that before every single one of these major gift conversations for their campaign, be it a cultivation meeting or a big ask meeting, we are on the phone with them doing what we call prep calls.

So 24 to 48 hours before the meeting is actually going to occur, everyone who’s going to be on that meeting, except for the donor, of course, jumps on a call with a member of our team and we talk through, “Okay, specifically, what are the goals of this meeting? Do we need to show them the case? Have they seen a tour before? Is there a piece of the property that they’re really interested in that we want to make sure we show them? Are we going to ask them to join a committee, or even be a volunteer fundraiser for us? What are our two to three goals of this meeting, and then how are we going to flow the meeting so that we follow those goals?”

This is incredibly helpful for newer fundraisers and volunteers. Remember, people who didn’t choose to go into this profession, like we all did, really appreciate this solid prep work. Of course, if an ask is going to happen, make sure that you all know exactly what the number is going to be. If there’s a range, we oftentimes make asks of donors in a range. “We’d like for you to consider a gift of between $25,000 and $50,000 for our capital campaign.” That’s not uncommon. But make sure that everybody knows what that ask is, be it a direct number or a range, and make sure everyone knows who’s going to be the one to actually say it. If you don’t do that, then you might have a scenario where you leave the meeting and everybody’s pointing at each other going, “I thought you were going to make the ask. I thought you were going to.” So make sure that you’ve got that prep.

Now, with our clients, we take the extra step and actually send them very brief bullet points, so that people will actually read them, on everything that was agreed upon in the group. If you’ve got the time to do that, or a staff member that can join the call and take notes, and then you send them back out to everybody who’s actually going to go on that visit, that’s incredibly helpful so that everybody stays, not scripted, but at least on the same page.

And then I love those folks that come with their big binders of paperwork. They have great hearts, but please don’t over-paper your donors. Nobody wants to be sitting in front of a mound of papers. People want to hear the story from you and your programmatic staff. So please keep that in mind.

Now, in making the ask and talking to your donors, here’s a sample meeting flow. Again, this can go about 100,000 different ways depending on who you’re talking to. That’s why it’s still important to have those prep calls in advance, because every single one of those meeting flows will be different. They should be different, because what works for Bob won’t work for Susan.

So, again, recap why your relationship is meaningful, and actually assign that to someone. Then give a high-level overview of the vision. If it’s a campaign, maybe it’s a quick look back at that case for support that you potentially reviewed during your cultivation meetings with them. And then make the ask.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is that they wait until the end of an hour-long, plus sometimes, meeting to make an ask. We really recommend that you make the ask in the first 15 to 20 minutes of a meeting. I know for some people that sounds aggressive or like it would be jolting, but remember, you have had several cultivation steps and several meaningful touchpoints with that donor before this ask is made.

There are a couple of reasons why. We’re all busy. The last thing you want to have to do is rush through an ask because the person’s secretary is coming in, telling them that their next appointment is here, or lose momentum, or have the donor know, “Okay, I know you’re here to make an ask, let’s get to it and talk about it.” And then it gives you time to move past that. So make the ask, and then talk about why that may or may not be the right number for them, and then continue cultivating them after the ask is made. Continue talking about some of those emotional stories.

If you wait until the very end of the meeting, you don’t leave yourself any time to do that. So put the dollar amount on the table, talk about next steps, and set expectations for follow-up. I mean specific expectations for follow-up, in terms of who’s going to do it and when it’s going to be done. “Mary, would it be fair to say that we could contact you in about two weeks, after you’ve had a chance to talk about this with your kids, or with your husband, just after you’ve had time to think about it?” Whatever that person’s scenario is. And then make sure you know who is actually assigned to that follow-up.

These are in your packet that you’re going to get, so for the sake of time, I’m not going to read through all of them. We’ve provided sample annual fund and campaign stretch language. Of course, you should be personalizing this. This is how I like to ask for a gift, but you should be making this meaningful for you. But again, be unapologetic about the fact that your mission demands resources, and even beyond that, it is your job, literally, to ask for those. Making sure that you’ve got a phrase that you’re really comfortable with will make it a lot easier to move through these conversations with your donors.

One thing I do want to touch on really quickly: we work in the big capital campaign world, so oftentimes we’ve got a number in mind. We’ve set our script, so to speak, with our volunteers, and then you get in the room and you’re set to ask for $100,000, and the donor says, “Well, I’m really excited. I’m going to commit $5,000 to your campaign.” What do you do with that? Donors are sharp. A lot of people feel like, “If I get that number out on the table, then they won’t be able to ask me for what they have come here for today.”

I’ll say this, and we provided some sample responses, but first and foremost, this is not for the faint of heart, going back and re-asking after someone has preempted an ask. Some volunteers, to be honest with you, are very uncomfortable with this. So this is something that we actually recommend you coach your volunteers on regularly, if they’re your fundraising volunteers, because they feel very blindsided by this when it happens.

A couple of sample responses. Always lead with “Thank you so much for your generosity.” This sample says, “I admit we had a different level in mind when we were setting this meeting. Tell me, is there anything that we could do to get you thinking a little bit bigger today? Is that a longer pledge period? Is that a different positioning of the pledge payments? Is it naming opportunities? Is it using your gift as a challenge opportunity?” So think about that.

If your volunteer is comfortable with it and very close to the person that they’re going to ask, then sometimes they are the ones to actually take the lead on the preemptive ask conversation. I’ve got one volunteer in particular who does this so beautifully. I don’t know why, but all of his friends do preempt him, maybe because he’s really good at asking for dollars and they know what’s coming. He is very comfortable with a “join me” ask, so if someone preempts him, he comes back and says, “Susan and I decided to step up for this. We knew that this was a big campaign that was going to require big gifts from loyal donors. I decided to make an impact because of X, Y, Z, and today I was going to come in here and ask you to join me at that level,” whatever their gift level. At the $25,000, the $50,000, the $100,000, or the $1 million level.

I will tell you, I’ve got clients that are comfortable with this and do it when the scenario presents itself, and never have I had a client where someone got upset or left the room. This has got to be done delicately, and it’s got to be done with the appropriate donor prospects, obviously. Someone you’ve got a relationship with. If it’s a first-time gift and you feel like the right thing to do is to say thank you and just work toward a larger gift next time, by all means do that. This is not a one-size-fits-all scenario, but here are a couple of recommendations, big picture thinking in terms of how you might head off a preemptive gift.

The follow-up. We’ve talked about this. Set a specific timeline, stick to it, and call. Email follow-up is less effective than phone call follow-up. And make sure you use those excuses or deadlines to check in. You’ve got a committee meeting coming up, you’ve got a board meeting, you’re publishing a donor roll or an annual report, you’ve got an executive committee meeting. The sky is blue. Whatever the excuse, you need to pick up that phone and call them. It might just say something like, “Hey, Victoria, we’ve got a campaign committee next week. I know they’re going to ask me if I’ve checked in with you. Have you had a chance to think about the gift that we talked about?”

Be very conversational and, again, unapologetic about it. They expect you to follow up. Make sure that you’re, of course, polite about it, but you are doing your job. And this is something that I will say: if you have to train your volunteers on something, this is often one of those pieces. So make sure you’re having these conversations with your volunteers about regular check-ins, and that you’re holding them accountable and they’re holding you accountable.

Donor communication. Of course, we’ve talked a lot about one-on-one meetings, but the reality is that we know that we have to be communicating electronically and in written format as well. I really recommend very simple communication, especially in today’s world when we’re all getting 100,000 emails a day. One story, one side of a sheet of paper.

I’ve got a small nonprofit client in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. They just wrapped up their first $1 million campaign. They were so fun to work with. They’re a relief organization providing relief to individuals when they’re hit with a medical crisis, and they send a “Relief in Brief.” That’s the actual name of the email that’s sent. I know that I’m going to have to spend only 30 seconds to one minute reading a story or looking at some bullet points, and guess what? I open their emails because I know that they’re going to be concise and to the point, with meaningful stories.

We can debate the elimination of the bulky, printed, mailed annual report at another time, but something to think about. Make sure that if you’re doing a big, bulky, printed, mailed annual report, it’s not keeping you from being out there and raising significant dollars because you’re locked at your desk for weeks on end proofing it and making sure everyone’s name is spelled correctly. And make sure that you’re using your board and your programmatic staff for thank you calls as well as ask calls sometimes.

I’ve talked a lot about this. I told you I use the word “excuses.” Connect with them about successes, any benchmarks, new research you’ve seen. If you are serving homeless youth and a new study comes out, shoot it to them in an email and just say, “Hey, I know you care about this. This isn’t something that we’ve published, but I know you care about this issue. I thought it would be meaningful for you to see that.” Again, position yourself as a sector or thought leader and get their advice. “Hey, we’ve got this new program we’re brainstorming. I’m calling a handful of donors and I want to know what you think about it. Tell me the truth. Do you think this is a good idea?” You can be prepared, because you may or may not want to take their advice, but ask for it. And then, of course, make sure you’re segmenting how you communicate.

I keep this slide because these are quotes, in italics, from actual studies we have conducted that really underscore the importance of stewardship. We know that big gifts really come from new donors. Unfortunately, with very sophisticated clients and even startup clients, I regularly hear things like, “Gosh, Victoria, you’re the first person to sit in front of me since their last campaign, when I gave them $50,000. It’s the biggest gift I’ve ever given and I haven’t heard from them since then.” Or, “I only hear from them when they’re asking for money.” Think of that again, going back to those excuses. Think about ways to be better than that, because that’s what your donors want and that’s what they should expect from an organization that’s accepting their investment.

So again: an update on their gift, an update on their impact, make them feel appreciated, have a real relationship with them. Focus on a smaller number of individual donors to be more successful at this before you really get that formula, even if you keep your larger portfolio. Just say, “Hey, I’m going to pick 5 or 10 VIPs and really try this regular, proactive approach. I’m going to put them on my calendar once a month.” Just with their name. “The third Thursday of every month, make sure I’m thinking about them, and if there’s anything new to send them, I’m going to shoot it their way, or I’m going to pick up the phone, or I’m going to shoot a little handwritten note if it’s their birthday, that kind of thing.” Making sure that people know that not only their gift but that they make a difference in the work that you’re doing is what they want. So I’m going to take a sip of water and a big deep breath and I’m going to turn it back over to Steven. But thank you all very much for joining me today.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. That was awesome. You deserve a little bit of a break. Thank you, Victoria. So much good info there. I was thinking that if people are watching this recording in 2022 or 2025, it’s going to be awesome. So hello to all you future people watching this recording, because it’s just timeless advice. I was shaking my head for basically the whole hour, not just when you would call me. We got a lot of questions, Victoria. It probably won’t surprise you that the biggest question is around the in-person meetings, which, of course, we cannot do right now, or shouldn’t do, I guess I should say. Is Zoom a . . . ?

Victoria Dietz: Yes.

Steven Shattuck: That’s it.

Victoria Dietz: I have a lot of thoughts on this.

Steven Shattuck: There you go. Let’s hear. I know you’re doing this. What have you guys been doing?

Victoria Dietz: Yeah, because we are living this right now. As I told Steven before, a lot of you jumped on the line: current clients, past clients, anybody who’s ever seen us speak anywhere has reached out, and rightly so. We want you to reach out if you’ve got any questions. We are really encouraging Zoom. People that never in a million years would have been comfortable Zooming, my grandfather included on Easter Sunday, are now doing it. The comfort level is rising. We’re watching a lot of our clients who are in campaign, who want to keep even a little bit of progress moving, doing cultivation visits via Zoom, and they’re also actually soliciting. I put an asterisk next to this: they’re soliciting for their campaign from their board members, essentially their family, and they’re also potentially soliciting their closest donors as well. So absolutely use Zoom.

Another thing that I’m recommending, although the date, unfortunately, keeps changing, is picking up the phone to donors and setting a late summer meeting. I was originally saying June, then I went to July, now I’m saying late summer, early fall, in-person meeting. I recommended this to an environmental client in the Richmond region, and she has something like 25 appointments booked for July, because people are so excited at the thought of getting out of their house and sitting in front of someone that they’re not married to or have not given birth to, that they’ll take those meetings.

Steven Shattuck: It seems like that would work now for out-of-town donors too. So timeless advice there too. We had a couple of folks, and a lot of this community that comes to these webinars tend to be one-person fundraising shops. What advice would you have for those people who are trying to do so many other things? What are the goals and ways they can get started and feel like they’re actually pushing the ball down the court?

Victoria Dietz: We have a ton of clients that are one-, two-, or three-person shops, or even a handful of clients that are 100% volunteer-led, with no staff at all. So I absolutely hear you. I would say that this advice is maybe even more important for really small shops, because we’ve always got to be thinking about, to be cliché, working smarter and not harder, and focusing on what’s going to be the maximum ROI for you. While donor acquisition and casting big, wide nets is important, it’s not necessarily your best ROI for a single-person shop, especially. You could spend five hours formulating the best direct mail appeal that the world has ever seen and you’d still be lucky to get a 2% response rate on it. But if you took those five hours and met with five different donors, experience and data tell us that that is a far better use of time when your bandwidth and assets are limited.

Steven Shattuck: That makes sense. There’s a question that popped up in here that actually came up in another webinar I moderated this morning with a much smaller group, and I’m curious about your take on this, Victoria. The question centers around people who are consistent big donors. You’re reaching out to them, you’re doing all this advice, and they give you feedback that, “You know what? I’m okay. We don’t need to meet. I’m just going to keep doing these things.” I think sometimes that can be discouraging, because the person asking the question this morning said, “Well, gee, does that mean I should stop bothering all the other people?” I think sometimes there’s a knee-jerk reaction to one piece of feedback. What do you coach your clients on when they do get that one or two people who don’t want that stewardship?

Victoria Dietz: Right. Those people exist, for all kinds of different reasons. Maybe they’re not terribly philanthropic and so they’re not familiar with the way that nonprofits traditionally reach out. Or maybe the exact opposite: they’re very philanthropic and they just, candidly, don’t have the time to be having these kinds of relationships with each of those nonprofits. But don’t let those exceptions to the rule discourage you. I have seen that, and I’ve especially seen it with volunteers.

As an example relevant to the here and now, we had a volunteer talk on the phone with a current donor to a campaign, and the donor said that they would be pushing their pledge payment off to the end of the year because of the shutdown, which is totally understandable. But the volunteer wanted to extrapolate that into the fact that they shouldn’t be sending pledge reminders at all. They were very far into their campaign, so they have a lot of people with spring and summer pledge reminders where the donor has requested to be reminded. So we’re encouraging people to send those pledge reminders, and just put a note on top that says, “Hey, we know we’re in uncharted territory. If you want to talk about rescheduling this pledge payment, please just reach out to us so that we can best prepare.” I think the same applies to what this individual is talking about.

So my advice is to hear that, but also meet them where they’re comfortable. Maybe they’re not interested in a phone call, but maybe they, in fact, are someone who reads a lot and likes data, and when you see a new study or when you publish a new impact report, you can email or mail that to them with a personalized note and inch toward that relationship. Once you’ve been communicating with them in softer ways, you might try again the next year and say, “Hey, I know that we talked and you said that you weren’t interested in meeting last year. I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your generosity, and if you want to, I would love to tell you some stories of impact.” Again, meet them where they are, but certainly don’t let that stop you from communicating with other donors.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. Don’t get discouraged. One piece of feedback doesn’t apply to everybody. I love it. Cool. Well, we’re just about at time. It’s almost 2:00. I want to be respectful of your time, Victoria, because you’ve got a lot to do and you’ve already been so gracious. And you’ve got a house full of kids like I do, but we didn’t get interrupted. This is good luck. This is awesome.

Victoria Dietz: Yeah. We did it.

Steven Shattuck: Amazing. Any parting thoughts for folks? What can they do maybe today to get things going and feel productive?

Victoria Dietz: Look, the phone works. You pull those reports, clean up your database, place those phone calls. You and I were talking about this right now: organizations really need to be thinking about what we’re calling your COVID case for support. Why should a donor care, candidly, about what you’re doing right now, with a lot of other things crashing down potentially around them, or the perception of that, certainly? What are the two or three things that you are doing right now that you can be sharing that are of value and meaning to the community?

If you’re suffering financial loss, communicate that with your top donors. Talk through that with them. When appropriate, ask for an investment. If someone’s typically a November or December donor and you all are really needing cash right now, you might call them and ask them to front-load their pledge payment or their annual fund gift to this part of the calendar year versus the fourth quarter. People have been very open to that. Again: pull the reports, place phone calls, schedule cultivation meetings.

The great thing also about using Zoom as a tool, or whatever platform you’re using, is that your executive director can be on it, your board chair can be on it, and two donors. You can get creative. We’ve got some of our clients doing small major donor meetings or briefings. Meetings is probably too formal, but the executive director is leading a discussion with 5 to 10 top donors who are invited, and they’re doing these once a day. Not with the same donors once a day, but with different donor groups once a day. That has been very effective, and people actually love it because they like seeing the faces of their fellow donors. It’s been pretty fantastic, actually, and something that hopefully will survive this crisis, because they can see, “Hey, I know John. We work in the same office building,” or, “I used to play golf with that guy,” or, “I know that person’s name from the community.” They’re able to see that they’re part of a really important team.

Steven Shattuck: That’s a fabulous idea, getting them together. Wow. That’s cool. So many good tidbits. I told you all, this was going to be a good one. Victoria is one of the best in the biz. Thank you. This is awesome. I know we didn’t get to all the questions. There were so many. I think I had 800 people on here live.

Victoria Dietz: Oh, that’s great. I offered this last time and I’ll offer it again. My email is victoria@curtisgroupconsultants.com, with an S on the end of “consultants.” Shoot me an email. I got quite a few of those after the last time we did this. I’m happy to follow up with any questions.

Steven Shattuck: Cool. Thank you for that. Check out their website. Awesome blog, like I said, with really good resources on there. And maybe even hire them too. They’re pretty cool. This is awesome. Thanks for doing this, Victoria. It’s really cool to have you.

Victoria Dietz: Thanks. It’s been great to be with you guys. Thank you so much. Stay well, everyone.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. We’re all thinking about you. Hopefully you all are doing okay. Thanks for being here. I know you’re super busy. I’m sure it’s a weird time and we are sensitive to that, so I really appreciate seeing a full room. We’ve got a couple of cool webinars coming up. Victoria mentioned one of them. Thursday and Friday are going to cover all things COVID. We’ve got Andrea Kihlstedt, a capital campaign master, one of my go-tos for capital campaigns. And then we’ve got, of course, Tom Ahern, who rarely needs an introduction. He’s got some brand-new examples, literally from the past couple of weeks, that his clients have been using successfully. So there’ll be some good stuff in there. We’re going to record them if you can’t make it.

Victoria Dietz: I’m going to be on both of them.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah. They’ll be good. Totally free. We’re going to record them. If you’re busy, no worries. We’ll just send you the recording. We’re going to send you the recording of this one, so just give me a couple of hours and I’ll get that to you. But other than that, we’ll call it a day. Thanks again for hanging out. You all are awesome. Stay healthy. Have a good rest of your Tuesday, and we will talk to you again soon. Bye now.

Victoria Dietz: Bye, guys. Thank you all.