0:00  
Hello generosity xchange attendees. I am excited for our continuing content on the exchange stage here. So this interview is with Jeannie Infante Sager. Hello. And we actually met when we served on a panel together recently on the future of generosity, I believe was was kind of the too long didn't read side of things. But we kind of hit it off. I immediately knew I wanted to have a talk with you. So we're going to spend, let's say about 15 minutes unpacking. What today, Jeannie, what do we what do we want to unpack in terms of the work that you're doing?

0:44  
I think we want to unpack the power and potential of women using philanthropy as agency.

0:51  
I love that. I love that. So one of the things that we did connect about is the neon one report. And it cited some of your work, but that's just a teaser, folks, like that is like a morsel. So Jeannie, Can you unpack some of the insights and research that you folks are doing at Lily school specific to this topic? Because Lily does a lot. Right. So So let's dive into this though.

1:16  
Yeah, so as you have you already shared i I'm Jeannie Infante Sager and I have the privilege of serving as the Director of the women's philanthropy Institute. And here at WPI, we conduct curate and disseminate rigorous research that we hope grows women's philanthropy, so really thrilled to be with you today. And, and what's unique, I think about the research is that we often say that research is just the beginning. It's what you do with it, that matters. And so we are really focused on making sure that we can translate this research to help inform practice, as and, and allow practitioners to be feel really confident about the need to engage more women in philanthropy, and to importantly, meet them where they are. And, and, and I love I love the term generosity. Because what we have learned from our our interviews, and our research is that women are really drawn to this idea of generosity more so then this concept of being a philanthropist. So they, they're, they're much more likely to understand the power of being of naming themselves and, and that identity of a philanthropist, when we explain to them that really, it's about all of the different ways that they are being generous, and that they are leaning into generosity. And that means that part of the research really demonstrates that women are drawn to this expanded definition of philanthropy. And I, I curate that as in teas. So we are all familiar with time, talent, and treasure. But for women, it's important that they understand that acts of generosity are shown in terms of testimony. So the ways that they advocate for a cause that they believe in ties, which is really opening up their networks and using their own social capital, to champion a cause. And then the importance of trust and transparency, and which is really rooted in all of those other T's in in, in really helping women connect to an organization and support in an organization whether you know, beyond beyond writing a check or giving money.

3:47  
So in the research itself, and folks, we're not going to Well, Jeannie and I can probably go geek out about methodology and stuff like that, we'll skip to the good stuff. What are some of the most interesting data points that you've seen that also translate into actionable advice, especially for small shop nonprofits?

4:09  
All right. Well, I think one of the most important things for small shops is really to examine and look at, again, data, look at their own data, and see, are they be inclusive of women? Are they tracking the dollars and time and engagement of women and if they really want to be intentional and inclusive, to really use that data to kind of help inform their work. And what we know foundationally is that women give more and are more likely to give and the data around single women is very compelling. Because that's a cross that's a cross age, income race. Across the board, single women are more likely than Single men to give and to give more. And if and so with that in mind, there is this idea of being wanting to disrupt philanthropy in some ways, because so many of our fundraising processes and what is seen as best practice, yeah, really favor men. So if the data, like our most recent, one of our most recent women give reports 2021, which was an examining a reexamination of who makes household decisions in terms of charitable giving, we found that women are on lead in those decisions. So whether it's six out of 10 couples make given these giving decisions together. But when there's a sole decider in the household, it's it's more likely to be a woman. And when you add those numbers together, that means 90% of all household charitable giving decisions involve a woman in some way, shape, or form. And so when we have CRM systems that default to male head of household, you know, one wonders if we were to experiment, what's the incentive to to make that default female? And what would that mean, to the work that we do

6:14  
it that hits home so hard, because when I was at my last job before neon, and this is like, 11 years ago, but but I was a database administrator, and they attempted to the director of advancement at this school was like, I want to flip because it was an old database, I want to flip the gender focus. And it was so daunting to do because we had 20,000 records, and just the data entry was so hard. And so if you make it easier, or start with that

6:53  
start, or it's like, start somewhere, start somewhere, start somewhere. And you know, as we know, in the fundraising field, you know, so much happens in the higher ed, like Higher Ed was who kind of, you know, launched or does this the best, right? And so, so even with higher ed spaces, if they just some of the some of these organizations, or some of these programs just started in the last 510 years, but even being able to just start somewhere, and the tracking, the data that's coming out of that is pretty phenomenal. With regards to even even identifying and saying and recording, who was who was on lead? Yeah. Where the decision for this gift?

7:39  
And how are you managing this? And like, what are your salutations then? Because there's nothing that's going to turn off? Repeat that number, again, how many people but 90% 90%

7:51  
of charitable giving decisions made in a household have a woman involved in some way, shape, or form?

7:59  
Does your salutation field? Say, Dear, Mr. And Mrs. Tim Sarrantonio, something like that, right.

8:09  
I mean, one, one might even argue that you'd make fewer mistakes, if you just think the lady or the woman? Yes.

8:18  
Oh, just kind of. Yeah, that's a

8:22  
I wish I had a space in the in the cloud, where fundraisers could just vent about that. Because everyone has a story of somebody. Yeah.

8:36  
Well, we do have the connected fundraising, Slack community, folks. So this is one of those things. Yeah, start a thread go there. We'll start a thread about this. So I love it. I love it. Place to dump that. Right. So and I know, I know, like, this is supposed to be a teaser, folks. So So one, we will include a link to some of this deeper research. But as people go into end of the year, Jeannie, what are some of the other like, just as a kind of some final tips for people that the research should help drive their decision making, because some of the other things that we've heard is, especially when you take into the marginalization of women, you know, black philanthropists, there's a pretty consistent theme that when we hear household givings down and stuff like that, it's like, yeah, but that's because you just keep going to white dudes, right? And if you're designing your appeals around that, then yeah, that the things are gonna get maybe not hit as hard as you think they are. It's not just the donor. It's the fundraiser talking to the donor. So what are some other actions that you think people can take?

9:46  
I think something that's really important, and what we discussed in a in a trends panel that we had earlier this year, is intersectionality. Yeah. And so simply put, this is an idea that people have overlapping identities, gender, race, class et cetera and therefore different experiences in society. And we've seen intersectional intersectionality come up in conversations about giving for racial and social social justice giving by people across the gender spectrum, and how different factors like race, wealth, and gender impact philanthropy. So we use this concept in our research constantly, because we know that these overlapping identities affect people's giving. And so we expect that intersectionality will continue to be a driving concept and women's women's philanthropy in particular moving forward. We don't want to look at women donors as a monolithic block, but we understand that different women come to philanthropy with different identities and experiences that shape, where and how they give. And for fundraisers, you need to understand that when you're having these conversations with each and every individual donor, and really kind of, and your relationship will deepen, and thus, their connection to your organization will deepen. If you don't ignore these intersections and are willing to have conversations about how how it how their experiences affect their engagement, with your costs and your organization.

11:13  
One of the kind of guiding principles that we have here is is kind of rule number one focus on people not their money. Right? And if you do that with an intersectional lens.

11:26  
Amazing, amazing.

11:29  
Jeannie, I can talk to you for hours, but I forced myself to make this a quick hit. So where can people learn more, we will include things in your your session kind of blurb here, but give us a little little, you know, what's up

11:43  
all of our research, you can find online@iupui.philanthropy.org Women's philanthropy Institute, go there, we're on the school site. And more importantly, we do a really great job of trying to make the research digestible and easy to use. So what you'll find for every report that we have is an infographic that helps you lead that walks you through the top key findings, but then also provides some discussion questions for you to use with your own staff and with your donors.

12:18  
It was some of the My Favorite research when I was combing through what can we put in the donor report. It was very easy to do and it made me keep going back so folks get addicted to this type of data because you're it's only going to help serve you better. Jeannie, such a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us on the exchange stage here at generosity exchange, and I know that we will see you again. So thank you so much Tim. Thank you for can do good.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai