0:00  
Yeah, let's do it.

0:01  
Great. All right, welcome, everyone. My name is Laura Block from Neon One, I'm just going to be kicking off the session. So just 30 seconds. And I'll give a couple recap instructions for using this room, the Coach's Corner. Rachel is our expert in difficult conversations with major donors and other things. But that'll be the topic today. The goal for today is that this presentation can be interactive. So just wanted to review the options there, you can actually join with video and audio by clicking the button at the top right of the presentation screen. But you don't have to, it is also alright to interact via the chat. So you can definitely use the chat, just double check that you're in the session chat by clicking at the very top right of your screen rather than the general event chat, which will be harder for Rachel to see as we go through the session. So session chat will be great. And then if you do share your audio and video to join the conversation, just you know, do your best to keep on mute aside from when you're talking so that we can avoid any background noise in the session. Otherwise, just wanted to mention that this is being recorded and will be available later to check out as we start uploading videos to the platform. I think that's it for housekeeping. So now I will hand it over to Rachel, founder and chief purpose officer at Gladiator Consulting for our topic today. Thanks, Rachel.

1:28  
Thank you so much for the warm introduction. And hi everybody. As she shared my name is Rachel D'Souza Siebert, I'm the founder and chief purpose officer at Gladiator Consulting in St. Louis, Missouri. I also am extremely proud to serve as a founding member of the Global Council for the Community-centric Fundraising Movement. And so that is what is helping us frame up the conversation that I am excited to have with you all today. One of the things that I have come across, you know, over the last 15 years in, in my fundraising work is this fear that fundraisers have to talk to donors honestly, or transparently, whether it's what's going on in our organizations, or what we need, as far as resources or ultimately telling them truths that we are not sure how they will hear those things. And if you're familiar, there is a movement that was launched by a group of fundraisers in Seattle called the community centric fundraising movement back in 2020. And there are essentially 10 grounding principles in that movement, that sort of give us a baseline for what it could look like to engage in the work of fundraising relationship-building charitable giving differently. And the sixth principle, sorry, there's like a lot of writing on the slide. But the sixth principle talks about treating donors as partners. And sometimes that means that we have transparent and occasionally difficult conversations. So over the course of the last few years, one of the spaces that I have been in with my clients, is trying to figure out how to have a strategy, how to navigate what might feel like hard conversation with donors. But ultimately, when we have had the opportunity to, you know, plan and prepare and practice for some of these conversations with both individuals and institutions who provide significant funding to some of these clients. They were well received. And so ultimately, what I have found is that it's really our fear that can get in the way of building a more authentic, vulnerable and transparent conversation with our donors that ultimately can not only yield more financial resources for our organization, but also potentially things that we aren't, you know, even aware are possibilities on the table for partnership. So that is where I am coming from today, and would love to sort of welcome folks on screen to share their own thoughts and questions or if you want to go ahead and drop them into the chat. I'm also happy to talk about some of those things. And I think, while I'm waiting to see what questions you have, we'll tell you a little story about one of the clients that I work with. So I am like I said in St. Louis, Missouri and one of the organizations that I have the pleasure of working with is called Forward Through Ferguson. They are an organization that was founded after the murder of Michael Brown, Jr, and Ferguson. And since 20, the end of 2015 have really been trying to bring to life, the various calls to action in the Ferguson Commission's report. And since I started working with them back in 2016, have really been trying to figure out how do we have a transparent and anti racist fundraising strategy that aligns with the work that this organization is doing. And one of the things that we are currently working on launching is what we are essentially calling a donor affinity circle, which is parts major donor circle, I think, and also parts learning and education and advocacy training for these folks with resources who are interested in supporting the organizations. So we gathered together a small and friendly cohort of existing major donors to the organization for Forward Through Ferguson, that really looks like donors who are giving at least $1,000 a year, over multiple years. And ask them what they were curious about. And we asked them what they wanted to learn. And one of the biggest things that we heard is that development professionals are really uncomfortable with discomfort. And so we don't give our donors a lot of space to learn more about our organization, or ask questions or say the wrong things we come in really prepared, we come in hopeful for a very particular outcome. But we don't actually create necessarily a learning space, whether we're in an ask or not ask conversation. And so in our pursuit of figuring out how do we organize our donors in a way to both be very clear that we want, we want those, you know, major gifts, and we want a multi year commitment from you, because that's what makes this work sustainable. Like, if you want to be in that kind of partnership with us, we're not, we're not going to put your name on a brick, like that's not the work that we do. But we do want to empower and educate you to be able to take what we're doing back into your communities. And so out of these sort of focus groups was born, the donor affinity circle, and it is, you know, co created by by these donors, and by some of our impacted community members, and by our brilliant staff members who are in charge of our racial equity capacity building. But it does open a space up for our donors to be in community with each other to ask questions and not feel stupid or embarrassed about them. And to then be able to take those kinds of things back to our back to their communities. So I think ultimately, one thing that has been really wonderful is that unintentionally this donor affinity circle for major donors has also wound up really generating new friends new leads new opportunities for Forward Through Ferguson as well. So I'm going to pause and see if anybody wants to come on screen or ask questions either about this work or about community centric fundraising.

9:10  
Hi, I'm Sandra Rodriguez. Work with Student Action with Farmworkers in Durham, North Carolina. And we are an organization that is very centered on equity, like a board member a board members are mostly people from farmworker families that we are helping through our work. So I came to work with this the organization after working in philanthropy for like 10 years, where the way we did this was, oh, you know, we'll invite people of wealth to be part of the board be part of committees and then that's how they became really engaged in the organization and contributed. So I really like what you said about this open conversations with donors, because they think from from the staff and the young people and the people that are really on the ground, there's like this, like, we don't want to give up our power to people that are not of the community. But we also need someone who does fundraising, we need support from donors who can give more, right. So, um, yeah, I guess. I'm just trying to figure out how to how to merge how to merge the two, you know, how to create spaces where we can have these conversations? Yeah.

10:35  
Yeah. I think no, I mean, I think the other thing that is hard is there's like a lot of power dynamics tied up in this right. And sometimes you also have nonprofits serving as gatekeepers, and they don't, and they don't mean to be gatekeeping resources. And that's sort of what winds up happening. And so I think part of it is also approaching it from a posture of listening, like, I often will ask a lot of questions, not particularly looking for a specific answer, but really sort of wanting to understand what lived experience people are bringing into this work. I have, you know, had the opportunity to coach a lot of different fundraisers and a lot of different organizations on on some of this work, and just the fear tied up in oh my gosh, if I say the wrong thing, if I ask the wrong question, if I bring up the on topic, this person is going to pull their money from my organization, and then we're not going to make budget right. And I get where that fear comes from, right, we the sector is is really swayed by scarcity. And in the, you know, last seven years, I've had a couple of organizations that have had to have hard conversations with donors that did result in you know, them, them losing a donor or losing a gift. And because they stood by their values as an organization, that was a statement for other people to start to get involved. So I think there is some belief system that we have to have where if we, we can say, No, we can have boundaries, we can challenge things. And if people walk away from us, there's more money, there's more money, there's more time, there's more people, it might require some more work for a little bit, right. But there's no shortage of the universe of people who are who care about our cause. So I don't know if that's helpful for you or not. Thank you, Sandra. I have let's see, a couple of questions are popping up. So let's see at a previous job as individual giving manager I had a hard time getting support from leadership for pushing back when a major donor wanted to fund very specific mission creep ish work, which came up a few times during my time there. Do you have any advice for getting internal buy in for having difficult conversations when leadership is afraid the donor will take their funding and leave? My My strategy for this is like building the internal coalition of people who've got your back, right. So we have all heard the stories about how the women in Barack Obama's sort of inner circle leadership planning meetings would all pre meet to talk about who was going to say what and who was going to have whose back and that is how they were able to advance agendas, right? Because we also see that nonprofit organizations can be can be very hierarchical can there's a lot of fear mongering that happens as well. And so you have to build consensus, whether that's in informal conversations, whether it's taking a vote with staff to help there. Now if you have an executive director that is challenging, there may be opportunities for you to engage or get feedback or buy in from board members. And this is not me telling you to go over your boss's head. Let me let me be clear, I don't need to get anybody fired today. But there are generally a lot of people within the scope of influence, who can provide different different perspectives or different factors for things. And I mean, ultimately, what's true, I think, is being able to say okay, sure, we have this major donor who wants to fund this thing, and that's mission creep. If we decide to take that gift, what does that do to the other donors that want to support this organization? Because they're very clear right about what we do. And if it's this and it's not this, then we have to be able to maintain those boundaries. So if this you know, I think mission creep ish is like the perfect way to word it, but if you have a mission creep ish donor who is gonna push you that way, then you need to be, then they should be able to fund your whole organization. Like if that's really the way they want to go, and you run the risk of alienating other funders, then you have to be able to draw some boundaries for what that looks like. Okay, let's see, we have, like a lot of nonprofits, a lot of our major donors skew older and more traditional would love some more tips on how we embody anti racism, inclusion and move away from white savior complex and our donor communications without alienating some of those donors, or do we just cut those ties and move forward with acquiring and retaining donors who align with our mission, vision and values? Thank you, Elizabeth, for that question. So no, I do not I do not necessarily think that you just cut ties with donors who approach this work in a different way. I am I will say, I am not pro cancel culture. I feel like cancel culture is is part of the reasons that we have gotten to where we are as a community as a society. I think and let me let me be clear, I think there are ways in which you can meet some people where they are like, my parents grew up, spent half their life in India before they came to the United States. And their perspective on generosity and giving and culture is very different. And so in the in this world, now, where their grandchildren go to a school where where they share their pronouns, it's not a matter of the fact that my parents don't care, or don't understand it, but it is a new concept. To them. It is like a new thing for them to hear their granddaughter be like, my name is Amelia, and I'm she her right. Um, I think we have to create spaces where some of these people have the opportunity to learn and get to opt in, right, because your donors will also tell you what they care about and what they don't. So if you create a space, where maybe you can talk a little bit about, about what anti racism looks like, or where you can start to include, you know, in your donor communications stories that are really a little bit more celebratory, and representative and maybe not evoking some of those like savior complex pieces. You can start to bring them along. There are also people who will leave if they don't like what they're seeing, or if you're making them uncomfortable, and maybe they will tell you or maybe they won't. And and I think that's that is true, I think we all want to retain people who enjoy to share their resources with us, but not at the expense of our organization, not serving the community and its presence needs and representing the community in a way that is meaningful. So again, I always and it might be helpful. Elizabeth, I just wrote a very short blog for Community-centric Fundraising, that org, they have a section of the website called the hub. And one of the things that I talked about in that space is bringing donors into the community-centric fundraising movement, and just some of the ways that I thought about it. Okay. Um, Hank says we're in an internal discussion on what to do if one of our donor advised funds wants to donate to a potential hate group. Oh, Hank. I had the opportunity a couple of years ago to work with a planning committee who puts on the St. Louis Racial Equity Summit here. It's local to St. Louis, but it has a national reach. And one of our partner organizations was the St. Louis Community Foundation. And they are they are a pretty traditional community foundation, but are really trying to be responsive to community and have started figuring out like participatory grantmaking and other types of capacity building opportunities, but haven't or have not really navigated the waters of bringing some of their donors along. And one of the keynote speakers for the summit was Angela Davis. And one of their donors who had a fund over a million dollars there was in a total tizzy that the Community Foundation would sponsor an event where Angela Davis is a speaker. I was Google Google Angela. She's brilliant if you don't know who she is, I hope you do though. And And that donor threatened to pull their advised fund from the Community Foundation and their CEO said go, like, we are in the business of supporting and growing community. And if that's how you want to spend your money, cool, but we're not going to be the vehicle for you to do that. It was a pretty bold stand, I think from our community foundation. But again, right, it hasn't harmed them to stand by their relationships. Because once the news of that decision got out, people who never thought of themselves as philanthropists in that way, have started to orient their resources in the direction of the Community Foundation. So yes, you might lose a donor. And also, there are many more people that you have an opportunity to engage with. Um, okay, let's see, I have a donor that brought a big cheque to an event and wanted us to announce the gift, the actual cheque was going to be delivered the following week, no actual check many conversations later with the donor. Suggestions? That is so shady. First of all, holy moly, that is a little shady and manipulative. Hopefully your donor is not on this call. Or maybe hopefully they are and they can hear this. So I am assuming that you've sent some emails, or you've made some inquiries. I think that this could go one of two ways, right? If you have already checked in a number of times as it sounds like, you know, you could be that person that like, sends an invoice with like, a net 30 or net 15, whatever, you could do that fine. I think the other thing that's possible, I don't know how big the check was, or what the context of the event is. But I think that you could say, like, Yes, I know that we had the opportunity to announce this gift at x event. But it's so meaningful to our organization, I hope it is that meaningful, that we want to talk a little bit more about what this gift is going to do and how we want to share it in our newsletter, share it at our annual meeting, whatever. And invite this person to come into your office with your ED and a board member or whatever, like, make it a big deal. And then say we would really love it if you could bring the gift when you join us for lunch or whatever. So those are my two like, you can be a little bit of a jerk and send an invoice or you can orchestrate something big, but it sounds like this was a big check. And so I want you to have that money. So if that means you have to, you know, create a space for this person to feel welcome and celebrated. Do that to get the money. That's what I think I would also welcome other people to chime in on that question, because I'm sure that we are not the only people who have faced faced that. Okay. Um, oh, it was $100,000 Check. Yeah, I mean, that's a decent chunk of money. I don't know what percentage of your budget that is. But I think that would be nice for anybody to get. So hoo that's challenging. Okay, we have six, I think, yes, six minutes left. So curious again, does anybody want to pop on screen and offer some thoughts, even reflections to some of the questions in the chat? Does anyone want to be brave and drop a question in the chats? I can tell you more stories if you want me to tell you more stories. Okay, I'll tell you another story. And then if you feel so empowered and bold, you can you can definitely drop your question in the chat or comments or own a bit of brilliance. We had the opportunity a few years ago to do the strategic plan for an organization called KTHX. They are a community radio station here in St. Louis, that's about 40 years old. And they had a lot of accusations in 2018 and 2019 about inequity about sexism. Just about some traditional behaviors and or culture that were not serving some of their new employees or their volunteer DJs. So back in 2019 2020, we built a strategic plan and we talked to their donors and the listeners and the DJs and the just their sort of whole community of folks. And the thing that we heard over and over again, is that especially the listeners wanted KTHX to create a more anti racist institution. So one of the pillars in the strategic plan, you can go, you can go to their website, the radio station is KTHX, probably KTHX. dot org, you can download the strategic plan and see it. But the second pillar, wound up being creating an anti racist institution. And when we first took it to the board, one of the board members was like, said something along the lines of But if we're creating an anti racist institution, then people are gonna think that we were racist before. Like, spoiler alert, this is this is the air that we're breathing and like the water that we're swimming in, like, Yes, you are going to have to create something different. So that the things the complaints that have been filed against you can't be filed again, right? Like you were acting in a way that was causing harm to people. Right. So anyway, so the board agrees to pass this plan. We posted the executive director writes, writes a letter to the community, as we're, you know, posting the plan, and they're going into their year end drive. So I'm sure that you've looked very similar to what NPR does. There, the DJs are constantly talking about making gifts and being sustaining members of the organization. So two of their donors, when this strategic plan drops wind up, essentially pulling their gifts at the end of the year, which is like a decent chunk of money for the organization. Because something along the lines of radio stations shouldn't be doing this kind of work, and I don't want to hear about DEI want to whatever hear the music that I like, and so there's little fear, right? With the staff like, Okay, we weren't expecting that, how are we going to be able to, you know, make up for that. And again, I think I said this earlier, but what wound up being true is that this organization, put a very clear stake in the ground for who they are and what they wanted to be and what their values were and what they wanted to share with their listeners and their DJs and their donors. And so while they lost two of these donors, they wound up having a 33% increase in the amount of money they brought in over the previous year, right, I don't off the top of my head, remember how many actual new donors they got. But 33% increase, you guys, I would, I would have been happy with a 5% increase over last year's end of year volume, right. And they had people writing letters to them saying, I didn't really know that I needed this until you guys said it. And it's so refreshing and exciting to know that you're working on this, right? So you never know when you say no to one donor when you put a boundary up, what kinds of doors that's going to open with other folks who you maybe don't have a significant relationship with. Okay, last question, Elizabeth, you just slid it right in. If, if I have any tips how to ask major donors to make a matching gift, were prepping for a year and planning. And when I asked her donors, if they'll make their annual gift to match, oh my gosh, just do it. There is like people love to give. And for them to know that their gift is not only going to benefit your organization, but bring in more money is like the dream right? Now, they might not want to be recognized for it. So I would there either two pieces here, I would first position that question. This is our goal for the end of the year, we would love to use your resources as a challenge match to the rest of our community, right? Are you interested in doing that? Right, which I would imagine they would say yes. The second piece of that is, do you want to be recognized as the matching donor because they may not want that attention. They may like the idea of creating new revenue for your organization, but they might not love the idea of of being named in the campaign. So that is something to consider. It is now two o'clock. And so I think that I am supposed to set you free, but would really love for you. My friend Tim who is put his blood sweat and tears into planning this conference is going to want you to scan this QR code and provide some feedback on the conference and on this session. And I don't please don't let me get in trouble with him is my request. But I'm also going to drop my email in the chat. I love talking about this stuff and helping nonprofits figure out how to be in this world. So you are more than welcome to To um send send me an email find me on LinkedIn or Twitter or Instagram. And I am here and happy to connect anytime. So thank you so much for joining today and I wish you well for the rest of the conference.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai